The move to bring IPv6 to wireless sensors networks, making them part of the next-generation Internet, got a boost this week with new products from two vendors, and an Internet group taking the next step in standardizing the protocol for these low-power networks.

Both the products and the advancing standard are adding fuel to a controversy over whether the Internet protocol suite is suitable for short-range, low-power networks, especially with a variety of other protocols, such as ZigBee, being adopted by vendors for a growing range of vendors.

Meeting in Prague, Czech Republic, earlier this week, the Internet Engineering Task Force’s IPv6 Low Power Wireless Personal Area Network working group (6LoWPAN) took another step toward a final standard.

The group’s goal is to implement IPv6 so that the protocol stock can run on small, usually battery-powered, sensor devices that are linked via low-power, short-range radios, in this case based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard. Each node on such a network would become another IP node, directly addressable by another sensor node or by a node on another IP net.

At Monday’s meeting, the working group made three tweaks to the draft protocol. “These three items should not delay the document from progressing on the standards track, and they’re trivial [to change] for any of the companies that have already implemented it,” says Geoff Mulligan, an independent consultant and co-chairman of 6LoWPAN. Mulligan says the document is poised to enter the final stage of becoming an IETF “Internet standard.”

But vendors are already moving. Arch Rock has added IPv6 to its Primer Pack, now dubbed Primer Pack/IP, which combines an IP gateway server to connect to enterprise networks; the Arch Rock Bridge Node with a 802.15.4 wireless interface to connect to the sensor networks; six battery-powered sensor nodes; and a set of Web services and gateway server APIs. The company claims to be the first to offer IPv6, based on the emerging 6LoWPAN standard, for this class of networks.

Arch Rock has incorporated a database to collect and manage sensor data on the gateway and then synchronize it with a back-end database.

IP protocols let these devices interoperate with other IP-based networks, but also with existing gateways, with existing industrial interconnect standards, says David Culler, CTO and co-founder of Arch Rock. They can exploit existing Internet proxy architectures for authentication, VPNs and the like, and can be managed via Internet standards such as SNMP.

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