Is 6LoWPAN-ND necessary? (Spoiler alert: Yes)

Low-Power and Lossy Networks (LLNs) are based on constrained devices. Energy conservation is one of the main constraints, and the traditional IPv6 Neighbor Discovery Protocol (IPv6-NDP) was neither designed nor suitable to cope with it. This inefficiency arises from non-transitive wireless links and heavy multicast transmission, sometimes rendering it impractical in LLNs. Substantial work has been done by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to optimize the IPv6-ND protocol, known as IPv6 over Low power Wireless Personal Area Network - Neighbor Discovery Protocol (6LoWPAN-NDP). Despite these improvements, full implementation is yet to be achieved in commercial, open-source, or proprietary sectors. In this article, we debate both Neighbor Discovery Protocols (NDPs), examining various aspects. We implemented 6LoWPAN-NDP in a well-known ns3 simulator. We discuss the complexity of 6LoWPAN-NDP and see why open-source, commercial, or proprietary sectors have not widely adopted it. We present how both protocols function optimally in meshunder and non-meshunder scenarios. We present results and analysis of both NDPs control messages’ behavior. At the same time, data traffic is turned on and off, and we demonstrate the operational behavior of Link-local Unicast Address (LUA) and Global Unicast Address (GUA) in meshunder and non-meshunder scenarios. The presented implementation can be helpful in enabling large-scale simulations and evaluating scenario-specific protocol parameters, along with protocol extensions.