World's Smallest IPv6 Stack By Cisco, Atmel, SICS

B Rog writes "Cisco, Atmel, and the Swedish Institute of Computer Science have released uIPv6, the world's smallest IPv6 compliant IPv6 stack, as open source for the Contiki embedded operating system. The intent is to bring IP addresses to the masses by giving devices such as thermometers or lightbulbs an IPv6 stack. With a code size of 11 kilobytes and a dynamic memory usage of less than 2 kilobytes (yes, kilobytes!), it certainly fits the bill of the ultra-low-power microcontrollers typically used in such devices. When every lightbulb has an IP address, the vast address range of IPv6 sounds like a pretty good idea."

Comments

Sweet

[mypalmike]

With a code size of 11 kilobytes and a dynamic memory usage of less than 2 kilobytes (yes, kilobytes!), it certainly fits the bill of the ultra-low-power microcontrollers typically used in such devices.

With my IPv6-enabled Commodore 64, I'm ready to surf both IPv6 websites.

Re:Sweet

[fm6]

And in fact, the Wikipedia page for Contiki links to a web server running on a C64! Shall we see if we can Slashdot it?

Whenever I trash MS-DOS 1.0 on Slashdot, I get a contradictions ("arguments" presumes too much actual knowledge) from people who insist that it's the best OS that could have been implemented on the hardware available in 1981. The counterexamples I usually answer are things like CP/M (the leader before commodity PCs took over), QNX (now sold as an embedded OS, but originally meant as a desktop system), and CTOS (utterly dead now, but my favorite at one time) that all had more power and lower hardware requirements. These examples go right by people because they've never heard of these OSs. (Except maybe CP/M, and then they assume that it's the same level as MS-DOS 1.0, because 1.0 was based on QDOS, and QDOS pretended to be a CP/M clone.) I'm very pleased to learn about Contiki, even though I'll probably never work with it, since it's a prime example that you can even do high-powered OSs with GUIs on 80s-era hardware.

Re:Sweet

[Talderas]

This is how it all begins. Soon each thread in your clothing will have an IPv6 stack powered by the static built up by movement. Then when it detects a thread break, it sends a notification to your iDoEverything to let you know your shirt is damaged.

Yes, this is how we'll end up running out of IPv6 addresses, thermometers and light bulbs.

Re:Sweet

[NoOneInParticular]

Well, even then we might be hard pressed to exhaust the space. Remember: 2^128 ~ 10^38. With 10^49 atoms on earth, if we convert the entire earth mass into ipv6 stacks, we would need stacks using less than 10^11 atoms to actually exhaust the address space. 10^11 atoms is pretty small, e.g., taking silocon at 28 grams/mole, this will roughly translate to 10^-11 grams of chip per ipv6 stack. That's a very small chip, and no earth left to move around on.

Though I really like your take on multi-threading.

Re:Sweet

[Talderas]

Thermometers could have network access to report temperatures to a central server. You're talking about potentially simplifying devices to measure temperatures, or devices which traditionally never had network components because of power or other concerns. A hospital could use those chips in their digital thermometers to report a patients temperature to a server so that it's automatically timestamped and loaded into the patients record. With a push towards digitizing patient records, it would provide a simpler interface of inputting data.

With light bulbs it doesn't seem as though it would be useful, since in most cases if a light bulb is broken, no big deal we'll replace it when it when we get around to it. However think about this from a security context. What if the light bulb can report when it's on or off? Combine that with motion sense lights, or just even tracking whether lights are on in a building could provide an opportunity to increase the level of security. The other option for use would be if the light bulb needs to be continuously on but typically isn't seen often by human eyes. If the light bulb is broke and not putting out light, then the chip reports that it's broken so that a maintenance person can get down there ASAP to replace the light bulb before the monster escapes.

Lightbulb on the internet?

[snowraver1]

Why would anyone want to have a light bulb with a data connection? Oh the switch to the bathroom? Go to the computer, click file --> power --> lights -->bathroom. Select lights 1, 2, & 3. Click enable, then confirm. Got that?

Re:Lightbulb on the internet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop flashing my bathroom lights!

Re:Lightbulb on the internet?

[Shados]

IP Addresses on everything is useful so you can ping the chocolate cake you made to see if your significant other stole it.

Re:Lightbulb on the internet?

[stoanhart]

So your standard $50 DVD player can dim the lights in your living room when a movie starts?

That's just one example of hundreds of little features that become trivial when everything in your house (not just bulbs) has a data connection.

Re:Lightbulb on the internet?

[OrangeTide]

My significant other has her own IP address so I can ping her to check her latency.

Re:Lightbulb on the internet?

[snowraver1]

Now that is a feature that I would rewire my house and buy new light recepticles for! Wait, who still uses DVD?

Re:Lightbulb on the internet?

[pwnies]

It's not just for internet connectivity purposes. The range of addresses used by IPv6 is broad enough that everyday objects can be identified with an IPv6 address for indexing and tracking purposes.

Let's say Wallmart is selling a lawn furniture set, and each one has a unique IPv6 address. Suddenly, keeping track of the stock is immensely easier. Need to know if the furniture set that the person returned was really the one that he bought from Wallmart? No worries, just scan the IPv6 chip in it. An employee has a garden gnome that looks suspiciously like the one that disappeared from the store a few weeks ago? Scan it and find out.

It's uses are significant. Don't dismiss the possibilities of having mundane objects having an address.

Re:Lightbulb on the internet?

[snowraver1]

Yes, a lightbulb conroller. Lets keep the lingo with the networking world and call it a "switch". We could give it a nice simple human interface and place it on the wall, about chest height. Perhaps one per room. Then all users would have to do is go to the light panel and "switch" on the light. I like where this is going.

Re:Lightbulb on the internet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Get off your candles or you'll wave your lawn?

Re:Lightbulb on the internet?

[Splab]

Gonna be real fun when the local script kiddie turns your house into a disco.

Re:Lightbulb on the internet?

[liam193]

A program you have just launched is trying to turn on your lights. Cancel or Allow.

Re:Lightbulb on the internet?

[Zerth]

With IPv6, instead of using multiple ports at one address, she can use the same port at multiple addresses! It all depends on whether she likes to multiplex or be serially promiscuous.

Re:Lightbulb on the internet?

[TheRaven64]

So your car can turn off all of the lights when you drive away, using the same protocol and address that your DVD player uses? And with the amount of address space IPv6 gives you, you could have a subnet for lightbulbs and a subnet within this for each room, so you just send a packet to the broadcast address in this subnet to toggle a group of lightbulbs.

Re:Lightbulb on the internet?

[jbeaupre]

Dammit honey! You drove off and left me in the dark again!

Re:Lightbulb on the internet?

[Minwee]

And, based on this amazing success, you think that they would do any better with IPv6? Maybe the method of addressing isn't the real problem there.

Re:Lightbulb on the internet?

[Zerth]

About 1,000 ms from connect to 220

Although she gave me a 452 when I pulled my DATA from its envelope, she was 354 soon enough and after about 570,000 ms she 250'd,

That might be why she's been giving you the 521 to you lately.

Re:Lightbulb on the internet?

[kamochan]

Ah, but the one we had did. It was of the hand-wavy type, infrared switch. Whenever I adjusted the volume on the TV (= iMac) using the remote, the lights on the dining room went on. Or off. So, you see, I didn't even need the DVD player!

Re:Lightbulb on the internet?

[tixxit]

I can understand the argument for lightbulbs, but light sockets make sense (single expense, rather than perpetual). It could tell you whether the bulb is on, could be turned on/off remotely or on a timer controlled by your comp, whether the bulb needs to be replaced, estimated life, energy used.

Just imagine a house that gives you recommendations for power savings: "If you turned your computer off at night, you could save $50/year!" OR, with the click of a button you could put your house in "power savings mode" while you head out to work, or go on vacation.

Sure we could do these things using other tech, but why? IPv6 is a standard, ubiquitous (well, at some point it will be), and can be implemented in only 11kb =]

Re:Lightbulb on the internet?

[ChrisA90278]

Why would anyone want to have a light bulb with a data connection?

Car manufactures want this. Have you ever seen the wire bundles in cars? If the lights had network address all you'd need one just ONE wire ad the switch on the dash would broadcast the "turn on" command. Every light bulb and every switch could have just one wire.

In your house it is the same. Light switches would simply issue commands and the light woould wait for a command to turn off/on. Housewiring would be hugely simplifed. and then automation would be easy. Room sensors could detect if people were there and kill the lights. All of this without mods to existing building.

Think of how much you could save if a 20 story building used network lights? Millions.

Re:Lightbulb on the internet?

[MBGMorden]

They have unique SERIAL numbers, but serial numbers aren't tracked by the store and are not part of the barcode.

The also have model numbers, but those often aren't tracked either. 2000 model Playstation 2 versus an 8000 is a minor revision of internal components. Externally they are pretty much identical. Stick one into the box of another and the cashier of any big box store could never tell the difference. As a matter of fact unless you suspected the person, opened the package, recorded the model, and then waiting to check on the model of the one being returned, I'd wager that 99.9999997 percent of geeks wouldn't notice the difference either.

The simple fact is that there is currently no quick and easy way to tell one product of the same line from another. Wal-mart is VERY interested in such things though, as evidenced by their push for RFID technology.

Re:Lightbulb on the internet?

[Anpheus]

"Could you turn up the volume"
"Sure thing"
"Ok, now can you turn off the lights please?"
"Yeah, no problem."
"Ok, now the volume is low again. Could you do both?"
"Uh..." *fiddles with remote control* *picks up laptop and opens a terminal and starts coding*
"I'm... I'm leaving you for someone who can watch a movie without opening up vim. It's not you, it's... I'm just an emacs girl at heart."

Re:Lightbulb on the internet?

[Joce640k]

What happens when your "controller" runs out of output connectors?

Say I want to add another lamp but the controller box has no more ports. Am I supposed to go and replace it? I bet that won't be cheap.

Now if each bulb has it's own intelligence I don't need to, I just plug it in and it will report to the central PC over the power cable.

Re:Lightbulb on the internet?

[cyclomedia]

>But I don't want them addressable from the world at large;
>I want to go through a controller that verifies access and coordinates changes.

You would already have this at home anyway, in the form of an LDAP server or at least coordinated LDAP rules. E.g. in my house the Xbox can read the network shares to play MP3s and AVIs but it can not delete them, this is controlled via LDAP and protects against hard-wired attacks, so even someone visiting who plugs their laptop into the socket behind the sofa can't delete those MP3s. And instead of a subnet mask you'd have a db of authenticated IPs and MACs alongside your basic user/password.

You would also likely have a wireless setup too, not all the devices on your future home network (e.g. the lightbulbs) will be hard wired so they'd need authentication *anyway* to know who's allowed to turn them on and off. Instead of logging in and configuring each one you'd just have a button-press system, plug it in, turn it on, press the physical plastic "register" button on your main server box and it'll be set up. Kind of like the way you tether a cordless phone to its base station but with Public/Private encryption and mac/ip filtering. This controls wether or not the neighbors can get on your LAN at all, before we even start thinking about read/delete rules on shares.

So there's already security in place, and the next logical step is to make these transparent and transient. At the moment when unplugging your laptop and taking it around to the neighbors you might get your home wifi still and be able to get on your LAN but what if you could visit the in laws in the next county, plug same laptop into *their* RJ45 socket and STILL be on your LAN?

Remember - your LAN already has security, and an internet facing NAT+firewall will not protect you against a malicious wifi or plugged-in client in your house or 100m away from it.

Back to the in-laws: In IPv4 space your laptop has to negotiate their router via UPnP (assuming they have it turned on) then find your home router via dyndns (which you have to use a demon to continually update) then connect to the only open port (which you have to set up and configure) on there to be redirect to a server inside your lan (which you've had to install and set up for this task specifically) to use some kind of virtual console or VNC session (which you have to setup and configure on your server and any client you expect to possibly take outside your house) to do anything you'd just be on your LAN, kind of.

Again, remember, you *already had to do the configuring of your security rules* just to protect your house and 100m around it anyway, everything in the previous paragraph is just a pain in the ass *on top* of that.

Instead, in IPv6 space your laptop will always be on your LAN - if you leave it on the train logge in (dumbass) you could revoke its MAC/IP from your LDAP as soon as you realise you've lost it, probably from your mobile phone. Your shares, printer and fridge will all visible just as if you were wired in in your lounge or wirelessly connected from the garden no matter where you are on the internet because the internet will be transparent, it's the way it's supposed to be.

Please specify OS licence

[pembo13]

At least on Slashdot, it would be nice if posters specified the OSI approved license as it tends to be import for different types of software.

The FAQ says it uses the 3-clause BSD license.

I personnaly like stuff like this to be BSD, while applications are GPL

Lightbulb?

[EdIII]

Not everything needs an IP address. That's just silly.

There is still the rather big issue of security. I don't think it has been addressed to anyone's satisfaction yet. Certainly not mine.

Right now the worst somebody could do is take out my computer. I could deal with that, given enough time and resources. However, dealing with the loss of my computer requires "light" and "coffee". You take that away from me and I am really screwed. Without my computer I am bereft of all the wonderful porn on the internet. Of course, I have a backup plan that involves a rather large library of tapes and magazines. Once again, I still need light!

Put IP addresses in light bulbs and other appliances and you risk a natural disaster creating a large population of pissed off men in the dark unable to "relieve their stress".

How's that for a "Ripple of Evil"?

Re:Lightbulb?

[cavtroop]

How about more nefarious things, like home heating/cooling systems. Power outlets that heart monitors are plugged into. Space heaters, electrical closets.

Kill the power to the fridge. Damn, there goes $400 worth of food. Turn on someones microwave while they are on vacation, and they come back to a $500 electric bill.

Not to mention the worry about botnets. Right now, they number in the millions. If every appliance can suddenly participate, it'll be billions.

No thanks, you can keep my appliances/lights/furnaces/toiletpaper off the net. Thanks, k, bye.

Re:Lightbulb?

[kamochan]

I certainly would hate it if someone DDOS'd my toilet.

Re:Lightbulb?

[Machtyn]

A firmware is an OS... an operating system. It operates the system for which it was designed. The firmware, if easily upgraded, is also easily hacked. If the thing has an IP address, it also means it has some remote interactivity, even if it is as simple as receive read (no write/execute) request, send data, buffer overflows can still be exploited, DDOS's can be used, etc. So that is another intrusion vector.

The IP stack isn't the limiting factor

[John.P.Jones]

Making the IP stack smaller will not allow low power devices to harness the power of the Internet because while it lowers the bar for technically interacting on the Internet we can't do so safely with a device that can't also implement sane security.

If a light fixture can't execute a secure authentication mechanism to determine whether it really should be turned off/on then it really shouldn't be taking those controls (or reporting its status) to IP queries. These requirements are already beyond the resources needed for less optimized IPv6 implementations this brings us back to Amdahl's law doesn't it... Don't optimize blindly.

Re:The IP stack isn't the limiting factor

[c_oflynn]

You CAN fit authentication into these devices. The Contiki example was in a device with 16K of RAM and 128K of ROM.

So the fact you have a tiny stack leaves enough room to run authentication. Simple authentication, yes, but hopefully enough...

Re:The IP stack isn't the limiting factor

[diablovision]

That's actually a really huge microcontroller, on the order of $10 a unit. The cheaper ones, under $1, often have 256 bytes or fewer of RAM. Some don't even have RAM, just a set of general purpose registers and some IO addresses. And RAM is relatively power hungry, which acts as a continual anchor on microcontroller designs. Power is far more important than memory size.

Personally, I think 2KB of RAM is ludicrous for a software stack. But the again, my favorite model has just 4KB.

802.15.4 can be implemented in 100 bytes of RAM. Who in hell needs IPv6 on a MCU? And why in hell would manufacturers add $10 to their unit costs (of say, a $.50 light socket) to enable IPv6 and its attendant problems?

Braindead.

Which way is this impressive?

[johnw]

With a code size of 11 kilobytes and a dynamic memory usage of less than 2 kilobytes (yes, kilobytes!)

I'm left wondering whether the submitter thinks this is impressively small or impressively large. Perhaps I'm getting old, but to me 11 kilobytes seems rather large. I might be impressed by someone squeezing a stack into, say, 301 bytes, but surely you can implement *anything* in 11 kilobytes.

Re:Which way is this impressive?

[mustafap]

Any idiot ( even you ) could do a simple stack in much less than 11KB. It just depends on how much functionality you want to drop.

I've an IPv4 webserver running here:

http://mikehibbett.dyndns.org/

that's running* a Microchip stack on a PIC micrcontroller in about 16KB of code. I bet I could get that down to less than 1KB if I knock much of the functionality out. Want to have a bet on it?

* it's running now. Not sure what a slashdotting would do to it.

Re:Which way is this impressive?

[TheRaven64]

Note that this 11KB can go in ROM, and only 1.8KB needs to be RAM. The same guy wrote an IPv4 stack that is much smaller, but IPv6 is a huge protocol comparatively. Considering that the MTU size for most of the Internet is 576 bytes, implementing TCP on IPv4 or v6 in 301 bytes for RAM would be tricky...

Re: Better than that

[apankrat]

> Go to the computer, click file ..

Now imagine that this computer is a size of a card deck, with a touchscreen. And it understands which area of the house it is in. And it automatically shows you all actionable elements in the interior - lights, fireplace, shades, speakers, etc. And it has an IR transmitter, so it also acts as a TV remote. And it has a WiFi, so it is hooked up to all networked devices in the house such as DVR and media box. And it run a SIP client that is hooked up to a landline. And a module for the cell calls. That would've been pretty sweet, wouldn't it ?

Re:Atari all the way

[Dishevel]

Your are both wrong. The Atari 1200XL is the one to beat, with a RANA disk drive with its motor covered in aluminum foil!

Haa! My Uber TI-99 4A with Extended Basic Cartridge would kick the Atari in the teeth.

Actually that's a pretty good idea

[wandazulu]

Laugh if you will, but a light bulb with an IP address would be a good idea for an environment which has thousands and thousands of them. Any industrial plant, stadium, etc., would probably benefit from being able to generate a report based on pinging each bulb to see which responded and which didn't, and to change the ones that didn't.

One place I think this could really be useful is an airport...think of all those lights everywhere, scattered about the runways and taxiways.

Re:Actually that's a pretty good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually that's a pretty bad idea....

Although it might be useful to generate a report of which lightbulbs have burned out, it won't save any money because the biggest cost is labor. You know, the fool with the ladder. That's why bulbs are changed on a schedule, and all the lights in an area are changed at the same time, preferably before any (or many) of them go out. It won't make economic sense to wait until a bulb dies and then rush out to change it. Even when the price goes up by an order of magnitude when smart electronics are included.

Re:Linux?

[c_oflynn]

Wrongo. The USB stick plugs into Linux and shows up as a network interface, instantly working with Linux (or Windows) IPv6 network.

There is a quick demo at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjztYx_F2Ko

And you can browse some of the documentation. It is fully IPv6 compliant, hence should work with anything...

Re:in the ipv6 future

[need4mospd]

You turn me on. -Kitchen "sparky" Lightbulb

CTOS

[turgid]

I hear that the first version of Duke Nukem Forever was written for CTOS and that Elvis, Roy and George are basing the next AmigaOS on its source code. Jesus is not available for comment.

Photoshop Please!!!

[FunkyELF]

Someone skilled in photoshop please show me a lightbulb or socket with an ethernet port

dateline november 12, 2016:

[circletimessquare]

a man drowned today in his sinking boat, but not before he had his laptop reprogram a lightbulb in his house to blink SOS in morse code to get attention. his wife and children, who did not know morse code, simply tried changing the lightbulb 2 times, not understanding the bulb wasn't faulty. the man took his last breath reading his last email message: "honey, you need to fix the lightbulb in the study"

DRM

[frrrrrspl]

That's cool. Now WalMart can sell us DRM enabled light bulbs. Suddenly you don't buy the light bulb, but a light license. And if the DRM server goes down, half of the country goes down.

IPv6 as serial numbers

[Kadin2048]

I think it would probably be implemented using RFID chips; what the OP was suggesting (I think) is that the RFID tokens (or barcodes, or whatever) use the IPV6 namespace to ensure uniqueness.

Rather than having a separate coordinating authority to hand out blocks of "RFID Numbers", companies would just get a large IPV6 block, and then give a block to each product line, and then to each plant or assembly line, and then give one name to each item as it's produced. They would be guaranteed to be unique IDs and they would have meaning (someone could perform a reverse lookup and get the manufacturer, at least). It avoids having to have a separate, essentially duplicate apparatus, just to manage the separate namespace.

MAC addresses are used this way on some networking gear right now. They have the address printed right on the outside of the box, in bar-code form, next to the model number (and sometimes next to an arbitrary serial number, which is redundant).

In general I think URNs ("urn:bigco.com/model/factorycode/year/dayofyear/serialno") make better unique identifiers than IPv6 addresses would, and remove a layer of abstraction that doesn't need to exist, but the idea is still plausible, I suppose.