Neighbor Discovery ++− a Scalable and Robust Address Auto-Configuration for Future Internet of Things Networks

Abstract

The growing complexity of the Internet of Things (IoT) solutions along with highly increased application needs call for more complex and robust networking solutions. Especially the importance of autonomic, self-configuration capabilities becomes particularly significant. The IPv6-based mobile ad hoc networks are envisioned to be a good candidate technology for the IoT networks. However, they lack efficient address auto-configuration mechanisms, which could extend the IPv6 to cover the requirements of such a demanding networking environment. To address this challenge, we have proposed the Neighbor Discovery ++ (ND++) solution for the enhanced stateless address auto-configuration. The ND++ incorporates a well-performing flooding control mechanism to the basic IPv6 ND design, which results in a very low protocol overhead in the order of few messages per node. The presented simulation-based evaluation, performed under diversified mobile scenarios, confirms the scalability and robustness of this approach with regard to the key identified metrics-reliability, overhead, and latency.