IPv6 and IoT Networking Standards

This article provides an overview of 2 broad categories of networking standards: Internet Protocols (IP) and Internet of Things (IoT) protocols.

1. Internet Protocols

The authoritative source for technical standards related to IP, both IP version 4 (IPv4) and IPv6, is embodied in a set of Request for Comments (RFC) documents produced by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standards development organization (SDO), as described in these IETF RFCs: 

  1. RFC 8711 Structure of the IETF Administrative Support Activity, Version 2.0 and 
  2. RFC 8712 The IETF-ISOC Relationship..

Other internet standards organizations operate under the auspices of the Internet SOCiety (ISOC).

The IETF maintains a website of the technical reference documents for both IPv4 and IPv6, including:

  1. RFC 5952 A Recommendation for IPv6 Address Text Representation,
  2. RFC 6540 IPv6 Support Required for All IP-Capable Nodes requiring that all new products must support IPv6 and updates to existing products should support IPv6. This RFC further requires that IPv6 support must be equivalent or better in quality and functionality when compared to IPv4 support,
  3. RFC 6877 464XLAT: Combination of Stateful and Stateless Translation,
  4. RFC 8200 Internet Protocol, Version 6 (IPv6) Specification announcing that IPv6 was an internet standard,
  5. IETF draft document A Simple BGP-based Mobile Routing System for the Aeronautical Telecommunications Network,
  6. RFC 8504 IPv6 Node Requirements defining common functionality required in all routers and other network devices that support IPv6,
  7. RFC 8683 Additional Deployment Guidelines for NAT64/464XLAT in Operator and Enterprise Networks, and
  8. RFC 8925 IPv6-Only-Preferred Option for DHCPv4 allowing IPv4-enabled and IPv6-only nodes to co-exist on a local area network.

In addition to SDOs in the United States (US), there are a number of international networking SDOs, including the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and the European Association for Standardizing Information and Communication Systems (ECMA). ETSI maintains a set of IPv6-related standards here, and a number of technical groups including Software Development Groups (SDG). ECMA maintains a set of data communications standards here.

The Réseaux IP Européens (RIPE) Network Coordination Centre (NCC) is one of five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs). It maintains a listing of policy documents followed by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and the five RIRs. Policy documents on that listing which contain the word RIPE in the title apply only to the RIPE NCC RIR while policy documents on that listing without the word RIPE in the title apply to the IANA, the RIPE NCC RIR and the other four RIRs.

The Broadband Forum, which is an organization encompassing a wide range of Digital Subscriber Line- (DSL), Asynchronous DSL- (ADSL), and Internet Protocol/Multi-Protocol Label Switching- (IP/MPLS) networking devices, maintains IPv6-related technical reports here. In particular, see Technical Reports (TR) TR-124 Issue 8, TR-177 Corrigendum 1, TR-181 Issue 2 Amendment 15, and TR-187 Issue 2 comprising BroadbandSuite 4.0 release, March, 2011 (also referred to as the IPv6 Toolkit, according to this press release), as well as TR-242 Issue 2, Feb 2015, and TR-296, Nov 2013.

2. Internet of Things (IoT) Protocols

This article provides a wide-ranging overview of IoT-related protocols and standards.

The IETF has published:

  1. RFC 4919 IPv6 over Low-Power Wireless Personal Area Networks (6LowPANs): Overview, Assumptions, Problem Statement, and Goals,
  2. RFC 4944 Transmission of IPv6 Packets over IEEE 802.15.4 Networks, 
  3. RFC 6282 Compression Format for IPv6 Datagrams over IEEE 802.15.4l-Based Networks,
  4. RFC 6550 RPL: IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks,
  5. RFC 7252 Constrained Application Protocol, 
  6. RFC 7925 Transport Layer Security (TLS)/Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) Profiles for the Internet of Things, 
  7. RFC 8025 IPv6 over Low-Power Wireless Personal Area Network (6LowPAN) Paging Dispatch,
  8. RFC 8138 IPv6 over Low-Power Wireless Personal Area Network (6LowPAN) Routing Header,
  9. RFC 8505 Registration Extensions for IPv6 Over Low-Power Wireless Personal Area Networks (6LoWPAN) Neighbor Discovery,
  10. RFC 8520 Manufacturer Usage Descriptions (MUD) Specification, 
  11. RFC 8576 Internet of Things Security: State of the Art and Challenges, 
  12. RFC 8655 Deterministic Networking Architecture,
  13. RFC 8928 Address-Protected Neighbor Discovery for Low-Power and Lossy Networks,
  14. RFC 8930 On Forwarding 6LowPAN Fragments over a Multi-Hop IPv6 Network,
  15. RFC 8931 IPv6 over Low-Power Wireless Personal Area Network (6LowPAN) Selective Fragment Recovery,
  16. RFC 9006 TCP Usage Guidance in the Internet of Things (IoT), 
  17. RFC 9008 Using RPI Option Type Routing Header for Source Routes, and IPv6-in-IPv6 Encapsulation in the RPL Data Plane,
  18. RFC 9010 Routing for RPL (Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks) Leaves,
  19. RFC 9011 Static Context Header Compression and Fragmentation (SCHC) over LoRaWAN, 
  20. RFC 9019 A Firmware Update Architecture for the Internet of Things,
  21. RFC 9030 An Architecture for IPv6 over the Time-Slotted Channel Hopping Mode of IEEE 802.15.4 (6TiSCH),
  22. IETF draft document IPv6 Neighbor Discovery Multicast Address Listener Registration,
  23. IETF draft document Reliable and Available Wireless (RAW) Architecture, and
  24. IETF draft document Architecture Based on IPv6 and 5G for IIOT.

The IETF also maintains an IoT Topics of interest website, a blog post of IoT-related current efforts, and a blog post of MUD-related current efforts.

Articles in the on-line encyclopedia Wikipedia survey the rapidly growing Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and the Internet of Military Things (IoMT), sometimes referred to as the Military Internet of Things (MIoT), the Internet of Battle Things (IBT), or the Internet of Battlefield Things (IoBT).

ETSI maintains a series of Internet of Things (IoT) related standards documents.

The ECMA Technical Committee 53 (EC53) is developing and has published standards enabling the use of Javascript on IoT devices.

Individuals have also developed IoT Javascript Frameworks.