Industrial Routing Requirements in Low-Power and Lossy Networks
RFC 5673

Network Working Group                                     K. Pister, Ed.
Request for Comments: 5673                                 Dust Networks
Category: Informational                                  P. Thubert, Ed.
                                                           Cisco Systems
                                                                S. Dwars
                                                                   Shell
                                                              T. Phinney
                                                              Consultant
                                                            October 2009

    Industrial Routing Requirements in Low-Power and Lossy Networks

Abstract

   The wide deployment of lower-cost wireless devices will significantly
   improve the productivity and safety of industrial plants while
   increasing the efficiency of plant workers by extending the
   information set available about the plant operations.  The aim of
   this document is to analyze the functional requirements for a routing
   protocol used in industrial Low-power and Lossy Networks (LLNs) of
   field devices.

Status of This Memo

   This memo provides information for the Internet community.  It does
   not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of this
   memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

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   document authors.  All rights reserved.

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   described in the BSD License.

Pister, et al.               Informational                      [Page 1]
RFC 5673            Industrial Routing Reqs in LLNs         October 2009

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
     1.1.  Requirements Language  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
   2.  Terminology  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   3.  Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
     3.1.  Applications and Traffic Patterns  . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
     3.2.  Network Topology of Industrial Applications  . . . . . . .  9
       3.2.1.  The Physical Topology  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
       3.2.2.  Logical Topologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
   4.  Requirements Related to Traffic Characteristics  . . . . . . . 13
     4.1.  Service Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
     4.2.  Configurable Application Requirement . . . . . . . . . . . 15
     4.3.  Different Routes for Different Flows . . . . . . . . . . . 15
   5.  Reliability Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
   6.  Device-Aware Routing Requirements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
   7.  Broadcast/Multicast Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
   8.  Protocol Performance Requirements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
   9.  Mobility Requirements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
   10. Manageability Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
   11. Antagonistic Requirements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
   12. Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
   13. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
   14. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
     14.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
     14.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Pister, et al.               Informational                      [Page 2]
RFC 5673            Industrial Routing Reqs in LLNs         October 2009

1.  Introduction

   Information Technology (IT) is already, and increasingly will be
   applied to industrial Control Technology (CT) in application areas
   where those IT technologies can be constrained sufficiently by
   Service Level Agreements (SLA) or other modest changes that they are
   able to meet the operational needs of industrial CT.  When that
   happens, the CT benefits from the large intellectual, experiential,
   and training investment that has already occurred in those IT
   precursors.  One can conclude that future reuse of additional IT
   protocols for industrial CT will continue to occur due to the
   significant intellectual, experiential, and training economies that