Subject: [AAA-DOCTORS] FW: Evaluation: draft-ietf-roll-indus-routing-reqs-05.txt toInformational RFC

From: "Romascanu, Dan (Dan)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 17:47:09 +0200

A URL of this Internet-Draft is:
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-roll-indus-routing-reqs-0
4.txt

Technical Summary

Wireless, low power field devices enable industrial users to
significantly increase the amount of information collected and the
number of control points that can be remotely managed. The deployment of
these wireless devices will significantly improve the productivity and
safety of the plants while increasing the efficiency of the plant
workers by extending the information set available from wired systems.
In an industrial environment, low power, high reliability, and easy
installation and maintenance are mandatory qualities for wireless
devices. The aim of this document is to analyze the requirements for the
routing protocol used for Low power and Lossy Networks (LLN) in
industrial environments. IPv6 is perceived as a key technology to
provide the scalability and interoperability that are required in that
space and is being more and more present in standards and products under
development and early deployments.

Cable is perceived as a more proven, safer techhnology, and existing,
operational deployments are very stable in time. For these reasons, it
is not expected that wireless will replace wire in any foreseeable
future; the consensus in the industrial space is rather that wireless
will tremendously augment the scope and benefits of automation by
enabling the control of devices that were not connected in the past for
reasons of cost and/or deployment complexities. But for LLN to be
adopted in the industrial environment, the wireless network needs to
have three
qualities: low power, high reliability, and easy installation and
maintenance. The routing protocol used for low power and lossy networks
(LLN) is important to fulfilling these goals.

Industrial automation is segmented into two distinct application spaces,
known as "process" or "process control" and "discrete manufacturing" or
"factory automation". In industrial process control, the product is
typically a fluid (oil, gas, chemicals ...).

In factory automation or discrete manufacturing, the products are
individual elements (screws, cars, dolls). While there is some overlap
of products and systems between these two segments, they are
surprisingly separate communities. The specifications targeting
industrial process control tend to have more tolerance for network
latency than what is needed for factory automation.

Irrespective of this different 'process' and 'discrete' plant nature
both plant types will have similar needs for automating the collection
of data that used to be collected manually, or was not collected before.
Examples are wireless sensors that report the state of a fuse, report
the state of a luminary, HVAC status, report vibration levels on pumps,
report man-down, and so on.

Other novel application arenas that equally apply to both 'process' and
'discrete' involve mobile sensors that roam in and out of plants,  such
as active sensor tags on containers or vehicles.

Some if not all of these applications will need to be served by the same
low power and lossy wireless network technology. This may mean several
disconnected, autonomous LLN networks connecting to multiple hosts, but
sharing the same ether. Interconnecting such networks, if only to
supervise channel and priority allocations, or to fully synchronize, or
to share path capacity within a set of physical network components may
be desired, or may not be desired for practical reasons, such as e.g.
cyber security concerns in relation to plant safety and integrity.

All application spaces desire battery operated networks of hundreds of
sensors and actuators communicating with LLN access points. In an oil
refinery, the total number of devices might exceed one million, but the
devices will be clustered into smaller networks that in most cases
interconnect and report to an existing plant network infrastructure.

Working Group Summary

No controversy.

Document Quality

The I-D is informational and specifies IPv6 routing requirements.   

Personnel

Who is the Document Shepherd for this document?
JP Vasseur ([email-masked])

Who is the Responsible Area Director?
Adrian Farrel ([email-masked])

RFC Editor Note

  (Insert RFC Editor Note here or remove section)

IRTF Note

  (Insert IRTF Note here or remove section)

IESG Note

  (Insert IESG Note here or remove section)

IANA Note

  (Insert IANA Note here or remove section)