Network Working Group                                         H. Audeoud
Internet-Draft                                                 M. Heusse
Intended status: Informational                                       LIG
Expires: September 12, 2019                               March 11, 2019


     Experimental observation of RPL: routing protocol overhead and
                            asymmetric links
                 draft-audeoudh-rpl-asymmetric-links-00

Abstract

   This document summarizes our observations of the behavior of RPL on a
   testbed composed of tens of IEEE 802.15.4 nodes.  Our first
   observation is that the continuous task of estimating the link metric
   to all candidate neighbors causes a significant background load.
   This traffic is persistent, even in a stable network where DIO
   transmissions are eventually widely spaced.  Next, this document
   focuses on the case of the presence of an asymmetric link, due to
   either a muted or a deaf node.  In these circumstances, the standard
   RPL mechanisms may well generate hundreds of routing messages per
   node and per hour.

Status of This Memo

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   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

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   This Internet-Draft will expire on September 12, 2019.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2019 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of



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   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
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   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

1.  Introduction

   We present three cases in which the RPL protocol [RFC6550] incurs a
   large number of routing message transmissions even though they
   correspond to expected situations in LLNs.  This memo summarizes our
   observations on RPL that are part of a broader set of experiments
   [EXPE].

1.1.  Convergence and background traffic

   The maintenance traffic in RPL converges to a low rate of DIO
   generation when the topology is stable.  Nevertheless, the proactive
   approach of RPL imposes that the nodes permanently gauge potential
   new alternative neighbors.  This mechanism is not standardized, but
   it is necessary.  Users need to be aware of its existence and its
   footprint.

1.2.  Asymmetric links

   The quality of radio transmissions depends on the environment and on
   the radio hardware.  In particular, interferences do not have the
   same impact on all nodes.  Also, the transmission conditions are
   different between devices due to the variability of the amplifier
   gain and sensitivity.

   So a link between two nodes may be asymmetric, and not present the
   same packet delivery ratios (PDR) in both directions.  In extreme
   cases, a node N may be "deaf" (i.e. other nodes receive N's packets,
   but N does not receive anything back) or "muted" (i.e.  N receives
   properly, but is not heard).

1.3.  Experimental setup

   Table 1 presents the parameters used in the experiments.  The trickle
   settings match the recommended practice, with Imin more than one
   order of magnitude greater than the broadcast duration (125
   milliseconds in ContikiMAC).  We found that this setting effectively
   avoids DIO collisions in our experiments.






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   +-----------------------------+-------------------------------------+
   | Parameter                   | Value                               |
   +-----------------------------+-------------------------------------+
   | Platform                    | IoT-lab                             |
   |                             |                                     |
   | Sensors                     | IoT-lab's M3 motes (ARM Cortex M3   |
   |                             | STM32F103REY)                       |
   |                             |                                     |
   | Sensor radio                | 802.15.4 @2.4GHz (AT86RF231)        |
   |                             |                                     |
   | OS & RPL implementation     | Contiki 3.0                         |
   |                             |                                     |
   | Radio Duty Cycling (RDC)    | ContikiMAC                          |
   |                             |                                     |
   | RDC Check interval          | 125 ms                              |
   |                             |                                     |
   | RPL Mode of Operation       | Storing                             |
   |                             |                                     |
   | Imin                        | 4 seconds                           |
   |                             |                                     |
   | Imax                        | 1048 seconds                        |
   |                             |                                     |
   | DIORedundancyConstant       | 10 (standard's default)             |
   |                             |                                     |
   | DAO re-generation period    | 15 to 22 minutes                    |
   |                             |                                     |
   | Objective function          | MRHOF with ETX                      |
   |                             |                                     |
   | # UDP traffic intensity per | 1 request-response every 5 minutes  |
   | client                      |                                     |
   +-----------------------------+-------------------------------------+

           Table 1: Main parameters used during the experiments

2.  Background traffic in a standard scenario

   On the IoT-LAB testbed, we start 40 client nodes and a sink during 2
   hours.  Each client sends one UDP packet every 5 minutes to the sink
   which replies with another UDP packet.  For this experiment, the
   nodes are distributed in the DODAG at a mean distance of 3.1 hops to
   the sink (median of 3).  There are 9 nodes at a distance of 1 hop,
   and 5 nodes at a distance greater or equal to 6.  Table 2 presents
   the results numerically.

   o  The bulk of multicast messages are DIOs sent by the nodes
      following the trickle algorithm.  As the network is stable, the
      network-wide multicast DIO generation intensity reduces gradually
      until all nodes use a DIO interval of Imax (which gives an average



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      period of approximately 750s in the considered case, approx. 1
      message every 20s for our 41-node network).

   o  An intense and continuous traffic of unicast DIOs.  RPL makes no
      provision for Unicast DIOs; it turns out that these messages are
      used by Contiki to assess the link quality to the neighbors
      [FNINES].

   So this latter traffic is a re-use of DIO messages for a task which
   is out of the scope of RPL.  The objective of this document is not to
   discuss the arguments for and against this specific mechanism in
   Contiki.  Nevertheless, such a mechanism is necessary to RPL: "RPL
   expects an external mechanism to be triggered during the parent
   selection phase in order to verify link properties and neighbor
   reachability" [RFC6550].  Also RFC 6719 states that: "A node should
   compute the path cost for the path through each candidate neighbor
   reachable through an interface" [RFC6719].

   At the application layer, it works well; but the price to pay is very
   significant, even counting the same overhead for broadcast and
   unicast messages.  There are 4869 RPL message exchanges over the
   course of the experiment.  In our special case of an application
   traffic which consists in one request response from each end node to
   the sink, we witness only 5516 one-hop data message transmissions, so
   that about half of all MAC-layer frames are linked to the routing
   processes.

     +--------------------------------------------+-----------------+
     | Message                                    | # of occurrence |
     +--------------------------------------------+-----------------+
     | DIS multicast                              | 26              |
     |                                            |                 |
     | DIO multicast                              | 760             |
     |                                            |                 |
     | DIO unicast                                | 2497            |
     |                                            |                 |
     | DAO (unicast, counted on each hop)         | 1407            |
     |                                            |                 |
     | DAO No-Path (unicast, counted on each hop) | 179             |
     |                                            |                 |
     | Data packet successfully routed end-to-end | 1795 (97%)      |
     |                                            |                 |
     | Data packet emitted (counted on each hop)  | 5516            |
     +--------------------------------------------+-----------------+

   Table 2: Number of messages sent during the experiment of background
                                  traffic




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3.  In presence of deaf nodes

   When a RPL node is not associated with any DODAG, it broadcasts a DIS
   message.  This message resets the trickle timer that schedules the
   DIO message emissions in its neighborhood, thus generating many DIO
   broadcasts.  Although this mechanism is useful to speed up the
   insertion of new nodes into the network, it is very harmful when a
   node N is deaf.  Indeed, as N keeps broadcasting DIS packets, its
   neighbors constantly send back DIOs.

   On the IoT-LAB testbed, we start 11 client nodes and a sink during 1
   hour.  Each client sends one UDP packet every 5 minutes to the sink
   which replies with another UDP packet.  One of the client nodes is
   deaf: its sensitivity is lowered and it does not receive any message
   from other nodes, whereas its packets are received by its neighbors.

   Table 3 presents the results numerically.  DIO packets are constantly
   broadcast at the average rate of 1 every 3 seconds for the whole
   network, i.e. approximately 2 broadcast packets per node per minute.
   This intensity per node is one order of magnitude more than in the
   previous experiment.

   This scenario is not necessarily only a routing protocol problem, but
   in part a question of neighbor management.  One could expect that the
   MAC layer would eventually detect that a neighbor is unresponsive and
   blacklist it, for instance.  However, here, the detection of the
   asymmetry could not directly be done by the MAC layer, as DIS and DIO
   packets are broadcast and thus, not acknowledged.  There should be a
   safeguard mechanism in RPL to break out of the DIS/DIO cycle in these
   circumstances.





















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   +----------------------------------------------------+--------------+
   | Message                                            | # of         |
   |                                                    | occurrence   |
   +----------------------------------------------------+--------------+
   | DIS multicast (deaf node excluded)                 | 5            |
   |                                                    |              |
   | DIO multicast                                      | 1177         |
   |                                                    |              |
   | DIO unicast                                        | 315          |
   |                                                    |              |
   | DAO (unicast, counted on each hop)                 | 202          |
   |                                                    |              |
   | DAO No-Path (unicast, counted on each hop)         | 40           |
   |                                                    |              |
   | Data packet successfully routed end-to-end (deaf   | 233 (99%)    |
   | node excluded)                                     |              |
   |                                                    |              |
   | Data packet emitted (counted on each hop, deaf     | 583          |
   | node excluded)                                     |              |
   +----------------------------------------------------+--------------+

   Table 3: Number of messages sent during the experiment with the deaf
                                   node

4.  In presence of muted nodes

   We finally consider the case of a node that loses the ability to
   reach some neighbors and, in particular, its preferred parent.  On
   the IoT-LAB testbed, we start 11 client nodes and a sink during 1
   hour.  Each client sends one UDP packet every 5 minutes to the sink
   which replies with another UDP packet (there is no deaf node here).
   Obviously, if we completely mute one node from the start, it will not
   disturb its neighbors much as all its messages would be lost.  So we
   start a node (node 40 of Figure 1) with a regular setting and let it
   associate itself with the network and communicate with other nodes.
   Then, after 15 minutes, we reduce its transmission power: it is muted
   and cannot reach its former neighbors anymore -- except one of them,
   node 33, so that it is not totally isolated from the rest of the
   network.  After about 10 minutes, the network is completely repaired
   and nodes are back to transmitting control messages at a normal rate.











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                 (45)                            (45)
                /  | \                             | \
               /   |  \                            |  \
           (40)  (12)  (18)                      (12)  (18)
             |     | \                             | \
             |     |  \                            |  \
           (33)  (48)  (10)                      (48)  (10)
                /  | \     \                    /  | \     \
               /   |  \     \                  /   |  \     \
           (57)  (55)  (30)  (51)          (57)  (55)  (30)  (51)
                     \                          /    \
                      \                        /      \
                     ( 2)                  (33)      ( 2)
                                             |
                                             |
                                           (40)

              Before node 40 is              After node 40 is
                   muted                         muted

               Figure 1: DODAG for the muted node experiment

   Here, the scenario clearly shows the effect of a local repair of the
   DODAG.  Indeed, the link between node 33 and node 40 should be
   reversed to reach the DODAG root again.  We have a transient loop in
   the network until node 33 is able to use node 55 as a successor:
   node 40 uses node 33 as a successor, which in turn uses node 40 as a
   successor -- but note that the traffic does not loop around, thanks
   to the data path validation mechanism based on the RPL header.

   Table 4 presents the results numerically.  This experiment shows that
   RPL handles this situation correctly: few data packets are lost and
   the DODAG repair is relatively quick.  Nevertheless, a naive user
   could expect that only a few additional packets would be generated
   for such a limited topology change as for most routing protocols.
   But the repair traffic observed in this experiment is merely a
   consequence of the constant background routing overhead that the
   proactive approach and trickle imply.













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   +------------------+------------------+---------------------+-------+
   | Message          | # of occurrence  | # of occurrence     | #     |
   |                  | between 15th and | except between 15th | total |
   |                  | 25th minute      | and 25th minute     |       |
   +------------------+------------------+---------------------+-------+
   | DIS multicast    | 0                | 3                   | 3     |
   |                  |                  |                     |       |
   | DIO multicast    | 37               | 172                 | 209   |
   |                  |                  |                     |       |
   | DIO unicast      | 58               | 313                 | 371   |
   |                  |                  |                     |       |
   | DAO (unicast)    | 41               | 258                 | 299   |
   |                  |                  |                     |       |
   | DAO No-Path      | 11               | 40                  | 51    |
   | (unicast)        |                  |                     |       |
   |                  |                  |                     |       |
   | Data packet      | 37 (90%)         | 220 (99%)           | 251   |
   | successfully     |                  |                     | (98%) |
   | routed end-to-   |                  |                     |       |
   | end              |                  |                     |       |
   |                  |                  |                     |       |
   | Data packet      | 103              | 598                 | 701   |
   | emitted (counted |                  |                     |       |
   | on each hop)     |                  |                     |       |
   +------------------+------------------+---------------------+-------+

   Table 4: Number of messages sent during the experiment with the muted
                                   node

5.  Conclusion

   First, we would like to emphasize the robustness of the Contiki
   implementation of RPL, which also matches the RFC specification to
   the extent of the points we checked.  Our choice of Imin is
   constrained by the broadcast transmission duration; however, the
   choice of values Imax and DIORedundancyConstant could cause what one
   could consider excessive DIO traffic over the long run, but this is
   not the subject of our observations.

   Secondly, the set of RPL-related documents leave aside the necessary
   mechanism of link metric estimation.  This is not unexpected as it
   can be done without raising interoperability issues.  Nevertheless,
   users need to be aware of this necessity e.g. in the case of power-
   constrained nodes.  Also, as this task is closely related to the
   routing process, it is tempting and practical to use routing packets
   to the purpose of link metric estimation, as in Contiki.  In this
   specific case, it is unknown if all implementations tolerate to
   receive unicast DIO, for instance.  A possibility could be to reserve



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   a packet format for metric estimation or explicitely allow a possible
   side-use of existing packets.

   Pushing this line of thought a bit further, it could be of interest
   to integrate (or combine) the broadcast DIS/DIO exchange to the link
   metric estimation.  This would allow the nodes to detect strongly
   asymmetric links at an early stage, and treat the messages from the
   corresponding neighbor knowingly.

6.  IANA Considerations

   This document includes no request to IANA.

7.  Security Consideration

   This is an information draft and does add any changes to the existing
   specifications.

8.  Acknowledgments

   The authors would like to thank Dominique Barthel for encouraging us
   to write this memo, for his guidance and his feedback.

9.  References

9.1.  Normative References

   [RFC6550]  Winter, T., Ed., Thubert, P., Ed., Brandt, A., Hui, J.,
              Kelsey, R., Levis, P., Pister, K., Struik, R., Vasseur,
              JP., and R. Alexander, "RPL: IPv6 Routing Protocol for
              Low-Power and Lossy Networks", RFC 6550,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC6550, March 2012,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6550>.

   [RFC6719]  Gnawali, O. and P. Levis, "The Minimum Rank with
              Hysteresis Objective Function", RFC 6719,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC6719, September 2012,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6719>.

9.2.  Informative References

   [EXPE]     Audeoud, H. and M. Heusse, "Experimental Comparison of
              Routing Protocols for Wireless Sensors Networks: Routing
              Overhead and Asymmetric Links", in proceedings of the 29th
              International Teletraffic Congress (ITC 29), Genoa,
              DOI 10.23919/ITC.2017.8064339, 2017,
              <http://hal.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/hal-01609451/document>.




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   [FNINES]   Duquennoy, S., Eriksson, J., and T. Voigt, "Five-Nines
              Reliable Downward Routing in RPL", arXiv 1710.02324, 2017,
              <https://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.02324.pdf>.

Authors' Addresses

   Henry-Joseph Audeoud
   Grenoble Informatics Laboratory

   Email: henry-joseph.audeoud@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr


   Martin Heusse
   Grenoble Informatics Laboratory

   Email: martin.heusse@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr



































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