Performance Evaluation of the Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (RPL)
RFC 6687

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Independent Submission                                  J. Tripathi, Ed.
Request for Comments: 6687                           J. de Oliveira, Ed.
Category: Informational                                Drexel University
ISSN: 2070-1721                                         JP. Vasseur, Ed.
                                                     Cisco Systems, Inc.
                                                            October 2012

                         Performance Evaluation
     of the Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (RPL)

Abstract

   This document presents a performance evaluation of the Routing
   Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (RPL) for a small outdoor
   deployment of sensor nodes and for a large-scale smart meter network.
   Detailed simulations are carried out to produce several routing
   performance metrics using these real-life deployment scenarios.
   Please refer to the PDF version of this document, which includes
   several plots for the performance metrics not shown in the plain-text
   version.

Status of This Memo

   This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
   published for informational purposes.

   This is a contribution to the RFC Series, independently of any other
   RFC stream.  The RFC Editor has chosen to publish this document at
   its discretion and makes no statement about its value for
   implementation or deployment.  Documents approved for publication by
   the RFC Editor are not a candidate for any level of Internet
   Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741.

   Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
   and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
   http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6687.

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RFC 6687              Performance Evaluation of RPL         October 2012

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2012 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
   (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
   to this document.

Table of Contents

   1. Introduction ....................................................2
   2. Terminology .....................................................3
   3. Methodology and Simulation Setup ................................4
   4. Performance Metrics .............................................7
      4.1. Common Assumptions .........................................7
      4.2. Path Quality ...............................................7
      4.3. Routing Table Size ........................................10
      4.4. Delay Bound for P2P Routing ...............................10
      4.5. Control Packet Overhead ...................................11
      4.6. Loss of Connectivity ......................................13
   5. RPL in a Building Automation Routing Scenario ..................18
      5.1. Path Quality ..............................................18
      5.2. Delay .....................................................19
   6. RPL in a Large-Scale Network ...................................19
      6.1. Path Quality ..............................................19
      6.2. Delay .....................................................21
      6.3. Control Packet Overhead ...................................21
   7. Scaling Property and Routing Stability .........................22
   8. Comments .......................................................24
   9. Security Considerations ........................................25
   10. Acknowledgements ..............................................25
   11. Informative References ........................................25

1.  Introduction

   Designing a routing protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (LLNs)
   imposes great challenges, mainly due to low data rates, high
   probability of packet delivery failure, and strict energy constraints
   in the nodes.  The IETF ROLL Working Group took on this task and
   specified the Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (RPL)
   in [RFC6550].

   RPL is designed to meet the core requirements specified in [RFC5826],
   [RFC5867], [RFC5673], and [RFC5548].

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RFC 6687              Performance Evaluation of RPL         October 2012

   This document's contribution is to provide a performance evaluation
   of RPL with respect to several metrics of interest.  This is
   accomplished using real data and topologies in a discrete event
   simulator developed to reproduce the protocol behavior.

   The following metrics are evaluated:

   o  Path quality metrics, such as ETX path cost, ETX path stretch, ETX