The IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low-power and Lossy Networks (RPL) under Network Partitions
Agnieszka Paszkowska, Konrad Iwanicki · International Conference on Embedded Wireless Systems and Networks · 2018
We study the behavior of the IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low-power and Lossy Networks (RPL) under network partitions, failures that are notoriously difficult to handle. Our work combines experiments in simulators and on a ~100-node testbed with formal reasoning methods. First, we show empirically that RPL's two popular implementations, TinyRPL and ContikiRPL, do not behave as expected under partitions. To establish whether this behavior is due to the implementations' defects or features of RPL's design itself, we model the protocol's dynamic operation, based directly on its specification, and use the model to formally prove how a compliant implementation must behave under a network partition. We then apply these theoretical results in practice by patching the two implementations, so that they satisfy all formal properties we defined for our model. Finally, we demonstrate experimentally that the behavior of the patched implementations is correct under partitions and in general.