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L'interconnexion entre le future protocole Internet Protocol version 6 et les réseaux de capteurs sans-fil (WSNs) était le sujet de mon projet en Chine. J'ai effectué mon projet en anglais so I'm gonna switch in English.

I've been working on the interconnection between Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) networks and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). I successfully finished the project using blip (Berkeley Low-power IP stack) and TinyOS 2.1.1.

I used IEEE 802.15.4 network between the nodes. Moreover, I introduced an adaptation layer called 6LoWPAN (IPv6 over Low-power Wireless Personal Area Network) to solve the compatibily issues between IPv6 layer 3 and IEEE 802.15.4 layer 2. So, 6LoWPAN is like a 2.5 layer between the network and data-link layers.

Below, it's a very simple installation scheme of a sensor network.

As you can see, there is a node directly connected by USB on the computer. This node - or mote - is programed to be used as an IEEE 802.15.4 dongle. Then, you just have to initialize the IP driver on the computer to allow the communication between the root node and the PC. After all, you can ping all the nodes which have found a path to the root node (the dongle).

The interconnection between IPv6 and WSN will be, I hope, standardized soon by the IETF.
However, the security in WSNs has to be improved. For instance, the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is not yet integrated in the 6LoWPAN stack. In the future, WSNs could carry very sensitive information and it must be well secure.

At this point, I highly recommend the network administrators to upgrade their networks to support IPv6. When we will reach the maximum number of IPs with the current IPv4, we will be forced to use IPv6 and to welcome the WSNs. I think that IPv6 is very important for the long term development of the Internet. Unfortunately, a switch to IPv6 is impossible as long as most services are not offered over IPv6

Here is my tutorial to install blip and TinyOS on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx.