LoRa Alliance® Launches IPv6 Over LoRaWAN®
May 25, 2022
News
The LoRa Alliance®, the global association of companies backing the open LoRaWAN® standard for the internet of things (IoT) low-power wide-area networks (LPWANs), announced that LoRaWAN now supports Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) from end-to-end. By expanding the breadth of device-to-application solutions with IPv6, LoRaWAN’s addressable IoT market is broadened to include internet-based standards required in smart electricity metering and new applications in smart buildings, industries, logistics, and homes.
The new IPv6 adaptation layer facilitates and accelerates development of secure and interoperable applications over LoRaWAN and builds on the alliance’s commitment to ease of use. IP-based solutions, commonly found in enterprise and industrial solutions, can now be transmitted over LoRaWAN and integrated with cloud infrastructures, allowing developers to enable internet-based applications while significantly reducing time-to-market.
The successful development of IPv6 Over LoRaWAN is credited to the active collaboration of LoRa Alliance members in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to specify the Static Context Header Compression (SCHC) and fragmentation techniques, which makes transport of the IP packets over LoRaWAN very efficient. The LoRa Alliance IPv6 over LoRaWAN Task Force then took the SCHC specification (RFC 90111) and integrated it into the body of the LoRaWAN standard. LoRa Alliance member company Acklio contributed to enabling IPv6 over LoRaWAN and was integral to the development of the SCHC technology for LoRaWAN.
The first application to leverage SCHC for IPv6 over LoRaWAN is DLMS/COSEM for smart metering. It was developed as part of the liaison between LoRa Alliance and DLMS User Association to address electric utilities requirements for the use of IP-based standards. Additional applications for IPv6 over LoRaWAN, include monitoring internet networking equipment, reading RFID labels, and IP-based smart home applications.
For more information, visit LoRa Alliance.
