6LoWPAN-SNMP: Simple Network Management Protocol for 6LoWPAN

We propose a 6LoWPAN-SNMP that enables transmission of SNMP messages over IPv6-enabled Low-Power Wireless Personal Area Networks (6LoWPAN). The 6LoWPAN-SNMP is an extended modification of the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). Compared to traditional IP-networks, 6LoWPAN is a severely resource-constrained network; hence, existing SNMP protocols need to be modified to meet the goals in RFC 4919, "6LoWPAN Problems and Goals". The proposed 6LoWPAN-SNMP provides for native communication of SNMP messages on LoWPAN networks. The proposed mechanism is resource-efficient and fully compatible with the standard SNMP. It utilizes SNMP header compression and provides extended protocol operations to reduce the number of SNMP messages generated among the SNMP entities. Compatibility with the standard SNMP is achieved by a proxy forwarder on the 6LoWPAN gateway. The proposed mechanism is implemented on actual hardware platforms using the open-source Net-SNMP library and the Berkeley 6LoWPAN on the TinyOS 2.1. The feasibility and effectiveness of 6LoWPAN-SNMP is evaluated. The experimental results show that 6LoWPAN can be effectively supported with network management functionality based on SNMP.