Progress Report on:
SDN based IoT Proto-
col Development
Presented By Wanbanker Khongbuh, (MT/IT/16-18)
Under the supervision
of
Dr Goutam Saha, Pro-
fessor,
D e p aTechnology
Department of Information r t m e n t o f I n f o r m a t i o n Te c h n o l -
North-Eastern Hill University ogy,
Shillong NEHU, Shillong-22.
Contents
1. Work Progression for the Project ( A Bridging Protocol based on 6loWPAN and OpenFlow for SDN based
IoT System.)
2. Introduction.
2.1 Internet of Things.
a) Protocol : 6LoWPAN.
2.2 Software defined Networks.
a) Protocol : OpenFlow.
3. Proposed Development of Protocol to Interconnect SDN with IoT.
a) Proposed Basic Hybrid Protocol.
4. Conclusion and future Work
5. References.
Work Progression for the Project
Phases for the Topic Progression
1st Phase: 6LoWPAN Research Study and Implementation on Contiki O.S – Cooja (Testing
phase).
2nd Phase: OpenFlow Research Study and simulation on Multi-Network system and A Comparat-
ive study on the implemented features of the Two protocols.
3rd Phase: Hybrid Protocol development to integrate the IoT platform (6loWPAN features) and
SDN platform (OpenFlow features) towards an efficient Protocol for a common platform for data
and control factors.
Internet of Things (IoT)
The vast network of devices connected to the Internet, including smart phones and tablets and almost any-
thing with a sensor on it – cars, machines in production plants, jet engines, oil drills, wearable devices, and
more. These “things” collect and exchange data.
IoT Architecture
It consists of 3 Layers:
1. The perception layer is the physical layer, which has sensors
for sensing and gathering information about the environment. It
senses some physical parameters or identifies other smart ob-
jects in the environment.
2. The network layer is responsible for connecting to other smart
things, network devices, and servers. Its features are also used
for transmitting and processing sensor data.
3. The application layer is responsible for delivering application
specific services to the user. It defines various applications in
which the Internet of Things can be deployed, for example,
smart homes, smart cities, and smart health. Fig 1.1 : IoT Three layer architecture.[1]
6LoWPAN
6LoWPAN is an acronym of IPv6 over Low power Wireless Personal Area Networks.
6LoWPAN is a networking technology or adaptation layer that allows IPv6 packets to be carried
efficiently within small link layer frames, such as those defined by IEEE 802.15.4.
i. Small packet size .
ii. 16-bit short or IEEE 64-bit extended media access control addresses.
iii. Low bandwidth. (250/40/20 kbps).
iv. Topologies include star and mesh.
v. Low power, typically battery operated .
vi. Relatively low cost.
vii. Networks are ad-hoc & devices have limited accessibility and user interfaces.
viii. Inherently unreliable due to nature of devices in the wireless medium.
6LoWPAN Architecture
Three different kinds of LoWPANs have been defined:[2]
1. Simple LoWPANs,
2. Extended LoWPANs, and
3. Ad-hoc LoWPANs.
6LoWPAN Architecture
Fig 1.2: 6LoWPAN architecture[2] Fig 1.3: A Simple 6loWPAN Example
6LoWPAN Protocol Stack
Fig 3 : IPv6 edge router with 6LoWPAN support [2]
Fig 2 : IP and 6LoWPAN Protocol Stack[2]
Forwarding And Routing [2]
Fig 4.1 : IP Routing Model Fig 4.2 The LoWPAN routing model (L3 routing, “Route-Over”)
Fig 4.3 : DLL mesh forwarding below the LoWPAN adaptation layer Fig 4.4 : LoWPAN adaptation layer mesh forwarding
Fig 4.5: Mesh-under and route-over packet forwarding.[4]
IPV6 Uncompressed and Compressed
Format
Fig 6.1 : LoWPAN_IPHC Header.[2]
Fig 6.2 : LoWPAN Base Header.[3]
Fig 5: Uncompressed IPV6 Packet with 6LoWPAN Header. [3]
6LoWPAN IPV6compression
Fig 6.3: 6loWPAN IPV6 Header compression examples.[4]
6LoWPAN IPV6compression
1. Communication between two devices inside the same 6LoWPAN network, using link-local ad-
dresses, the IPv6 header can be compressed to only 2 bytes.
2. Communication destined to a device outside of the 6LoWPAN network and the prefix for the ex-
ternal network is known, where the IPv6 header can be compressed to 12 bytes.
3. Similar to 2, but without knowing the prefix of the external device, that gives an IPv6 header of
20 bytes.
6LoWPAN Header Format
Fig 7: 6LoWPAN stacked headers.[4]
COOJA IMPLEMENTATIONS
Software Defined Networks (SDN)
Definition
The physical separation of the network control plane from the forwarding plane, and
where a control plane controls several devices i.e. Control and Data planes are de-
coupled.
SDN Principles
• Separate Control plane and Data plane entities.
• Execute or run Control plane software on general purpose hardware
– Decouple from specific networking hardware
– Use commodity servers
• Have programmable data planes
– Maintain, control and program data plane state from a central-entity
• An architecture to control not just a networking device but an entire network.
SDN Architecture
Fig 1 :The three planes/layers in the SDN architecture [5]
OpenFlow
What is OpenFlow? [6]
1. OpenFlow is the first standard communications interface defined between the control and for-
warding layers of an SDN architecture.
2. OpenFlow allows direct access to and manipulation of the forwarding plane of network devices
such as switches and routers, both physical and virtual (hypervisor-based).
3. In an SDN/OpenFlow architecture, there are two main elements, the controllers and the forward-
ing devices.
4. An OpenFlow-enabled forwarding device is based on a pipeline of flow tables where each entry
of a flow table has three parts:
1.a matching rule,
[Link] to be executed on matching packets, and
[Link] that keep statistics of matching packets.
OpenFlow Protocol
Fig 4 : OpenFlow-enabled SDN devices .
OpenFlow Protocol
Fig 5 : Flowtable rules for matching packets [7]
Proposed Development of Protocol to
Interconnect SDN with IOT
IoT Packet SDN
Protocol
6LowPAN OpenFlow
Hybrid
Protocol
Fig 7: Flowchart for the Hybrid Protocol setup
Proposed Basic Hybrid Protocol
Input: Sensor data Packets Modified Protocol will Contain:
Output: Compatible SDN-IoT Packets 1. Matching rules
Procedure: 1. Field
1. Sensors will extract the data. 2. Value
2. Switch: 3. Length
Begin: 4. Mask value
i. Processing the extracted Data. 2. Action
ii. Check for the Routes on the Flow Tables.
iii. If Match is found: 3. Counter
Perform the actions Necessary:
a) Forward the Packets
b) Drop Packets
c) Receive the Packet for processing
Else
Drop the Packet or Pass the packet to the
Controller.
End
End Procedure
Flowchart of the Basic Proposed Protocol
Process the packet
Receive
Resend the packet Action Discard the packet
Forward Drop
yes
Match no
Sensors ex- Rules?
Send Flow Request
tract the
Data to Controller
Check Flow
Devices Routes Controller
Switch
Conclusion
• The SDN-IoT model is very challenging, as it comprises of two unfledged models which are still en-
tangled in their own complexities. The IoT networks are resource constrained, which compels all
research efforts to be energy conscious.
• The introduction of SDN in IoT presents a very novel and progressive step in leveraging the chal-
lenges of resources in IoT services. The current IoT structure have several limitation like availabil-
ity, reliability, interoperability, scalability and security.. However, the SDN model brings along its
own challenges, especially the trade-o between functionalities that needs to be retained on the
sensor device and the impact on common network factors such as latency, congestion, etc.
• For the T h e p r o g r e s s i o n w o r k t o b e d o n e , we will be using the proposed hybrid
protocol with SDN and IoT network. This protocol functionalities will have a leverage over the
present working IoT network. The interoperability issue in terms of packet for the two different net-
work (SDN and IoT) will also be considered.
References
1. Sethi, Pallavi, and Smruti R. Sarangi, “Internet of Things: Architectures, Protocols, and Applications”,
Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Hindawi Publishing Corporation, pp. 1-26, 2017.
2. Shelby, Z., & Bormann, C, ”6LoWPAN: The wireless embedded Internet” , John Wiley & Sons, Vol. 43,
2011.
3. Thubert, P., & Hui, J. W.. “Compression format for IPv6 datagrams over IEEE 802.15. 4-based networks”,
2011.
4. Olsson, Jonas. "6LoWPAN demystified." Texas Instruments: 13, 2014.
5. Ahmad, I., Namal, S., Ylianttila, M., & Gurtov, A., “Security in software defined networks: A survey”, IEEE
Communications Surveys & Tutorials, vol. 17 no. 4, pp. 2317-2346, 2015.
6. Kreutz, D., Ramos, F. M., Verissimo, P. E., Rothenberg, C. E., Azodolmolky, S., & Uhlig, S., “Software-
defined networking: A comprehensive survey”. Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 103 no. 1, pp. 14-76, 2015.
References
7. Consortium, O. S. et al. “Openflow switch specification version 1.1.0 implemented wire protocol 0x02”.
(2011).
8. Hu, F., Hao, Q., & Bao, K. ” A survey on software-defined network and openflow: From concept to imple-
mentation”. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 16(4), 2181-2206, 2014.
9. Braun, W., & Menth, M., “Software-defined networking using OpenFlow: Protocols, applications and ar-
chitectural design choices”, Future Internet, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 302-336, 2014.
10. Al-Fuqaha, A., Guizani, M., Mohammadi, M., Aledhari, M., & Ayyash, M., “Internet of Things: A Survey On
Enabling Technologies, Protocols, And Applications” IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, vol. 17,
no. 4, pp. 2347-2376, 2015.
11. Atzori L, Iera A, Morabito G. “The internet of things: A survey”, Computer networks. Oct 28, vol. 54(15),
pp. 2787-805, 2010.
References
12. Luo, Tie, Hwee-Pink Tan, and Tony QS Quek. "Sensor OpenFlow: Enabling software-defined wireless
sensor networks." IEEE Communications letters 16, no. 11 : 1896-1899. 2012.
13. De Oliveira, B. T., Gabriel, L. B., & Margi, C. B.. “TinySDN: Enabling multiple controllers for software-
defined wireless sensor networks”. IEEE Latin America Transactions, 13(11), 3690-3696, 2015.
14. Galluccio, Laura, Sebastiano Milardo, Giacomo Morabito, and Sergio Palazzo. "SDN-WISE: Design, pro-
totyping and experimentation of a stateful SDN solution for WIreless SEnsor networks." In Computer
Communications (INFOCOM), 2015 IEEE Conference on, pp. 513-521. IEEE, 2015.
15. Alves, Renan CA, et al. "IT-SDN: Improved architecture for SDWSN." XXXV Brazilian Symposium on
Computer Networks and Distributed Systems. 2017.
THANK YOU