Internet Standards Effort Underway for Wireless Sensor Networks

The Internet Engineering Task Force's (IETF) Routing over Low-power and Lossy Networks (Roll) group is pursuing a standard way for control and sensor nodes on Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and 802.15.4 nets to link to the broader Internet..

"There has been an explosion of proprietary protocols for sensor networks in the last five years," said Jean-Philippe Vasseur, a distinguished engineer in the corporate technology group at Cisco Systems who will co-chair the Roll effort. "When each one aims to become an ad hoc standard, you wind up with a model of many translation gateways, leading to a complex and expensive architecture that doesn't scale."

"Having Cisco place its focus behind Roll is interesting, as that company has the ability to influence a large number of IP-based applications," said George West, president and senior analyst at West Technology Research Solutions (Mountain View, Calif.). The effort could also let developers tap into the wealth of tools for IP nets, West said.

Thus far, about 250 people have signed up on the group's e-mail reflector to work on the standard. They include staffers from such companies as France Telecom, Intel, Sun Microsystems and home automation specialist Zensys. More than 100 turned out for the group's first meeting, held in late March.

The Roll effort will assess requirements in sensor nets for use in home and industrial automation as well as in urban settings. It is building on the work of the IETF 6LoWPAN group (RFC 4944), which has specified use of IPv6 over low-power wireless nets.