Skip to content

Commit

Permalink
6LoWPAN: update documentation
Browse files Browse the repository at this point in the history
This patch adds chapter to documentation which describes how to use
6lowpan technology.

Signed-off-by: Alexander Smirnov <alex.bluesman.smirnov@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
  • Loading branch information
alex.bluesman.smirnov@gmail.com authored and David S. Miller committed Nov 14, 2011
1 parent f8b1b5d commit 63ce40e
Showing 1 changed file with 27 additions and 0 deletions.
27 changes: 27 additions & 0 deletions Documentation/networking/ieee802154.txt
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -78,3 +78,30 @@ in software. This is currently WIP.

See header include/net/mac802154.h and several drivers in drivers/ieee802154/.

6LoWPAN Linux implementation
============================

The IEEE 802.15.4 standard specifies an MTU of 128 bytes, yielding about 80
octets of actual MAC payload once security is turned on, on a wireless link
with a link throughput of 250 kbps or less. The 6LoWPAN adaptation format
[RFC4944] was specified to carry IPv6 datagrams over such constrained links,
taking into account limited bandwidth, memory, or energy resources that are
expected in applications such as wireless Sensor Networks. [RFC4944] defines
a Mesh Addressing header to support sub-IP forwarding, a Fragmentation header
to support the IPv6 minimum MTU requirement [RFC2460], and stateless header
compression for IPv6 datagrams (LOWPAN_HC1 and LOWPAN_HC2) to reduce the
relatively large IPv6 and UDP headers down to (in the best case) several bytes.

In Semptember 2011 the standard update was published - [RFC6282].
It deprecates HC1 and HC2 compression and defines IPHC encoding format which is
used in this Linux implementation.

All the code related to 6lowpan you may find in files: net/ieee802154/6lowpan.*

To setup 6lowpan interface you need (busybox release > 1.17.0):
1. Add IEEE802.15.4 interface and initialize PANid;
2. Add 6lowpan interface by command like:
# ip link add link wpan0 name lowpan0 type lowpan
3. Set MAC (if needs):
# ip link set lowpan0 address de:ad:be:ef:ca:fe:ba:be
4. Bring up 'lowpan0' interface

0 comments on commit 63ce40e

Please sign in to comment.