D-RPL: Overcoming Memory Limitations in RPL Point-To-Multipoint Routing

RPL, the IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks, supports both upward and downward traffic. The latter is fundamental for actuation, for queries, and for any bidirectional protocol such as TCP, yet its support is compromised by memory limitation in the nodes. In RPL storing mode, nodes store routing entries for each destination in their sub-graph, limiting the size of the network, and often leading to unreachable nodes and protocol failures. We propose here D-RPL, a mechanism that overcomes the scalability limitation by mending storing mode forwarding with multicast-based dissemination. Our modification has minimal impact on code size and memory usage. D-RPL is activated only when memory limits are reached, and affects only the portion of the traffic and the segments of the network that have exceeded memory limits. We evaluate our solution using Cooja emulation over different synthetic topologies, showing a six-fold improvement in scalability.