World's Smallest IPv6 Stack By Cisco, Atmel, SICS 287
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."
Sweet (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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C'mon, you and I both know that an IPv6 Spectrum would kick its ass, with or without hardware sprite support.
Atari all the way (Score:2)
Your are both wrong. The Atari 1200XL is the one to beat, with a RANA disk drive with its motor covered in aluminum foil!
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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.
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Disk drives are for wimps, as the enduring usefulness of the C64 testifies.
Re:Sweet (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
CTOS (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Re:Sweet (Score:4, Funny)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
Though I really like your take on multi-threading.
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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 simp
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Gees, you kids. I wrote a battle tanks game for the TS-1000 that ran in less than 4k (yes, I had to hand-assemble the assembly language), a turing program that mimicked a human smartass in 20k (in BASIC at that!), and you think 11k for an HTML stack is small?
With my IPv6-enabled Commodore 64, I'm ready to surf both IPv6 websites
You didn't read the summary. It speaks of your thermostat and such devices.
Lightbulb on the internet? (Score:5, Funny)
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Stop flashing my bathroom lights!
Re:Lightbulb on the internet? (Score:5, Funny)
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? (Score:4, Funny)
My significant other has her own IP address so I can ping her to check her latency.
Re:Lightbulb on the internet? (Score:5, Funny)
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? (Score:5, Funny)
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? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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This would keep costs down of the bulbs, and would result in probably much less wiring, since the bulbs would only need 1 wire, power (assuming they're traditional tungsten filament).
Re:Lightbulb on the internet? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Lightbulb on the internet? (Score:5, Funny)
"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? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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.
That doesn't tell me why devices living inside your home network needs IPv6.
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>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'
Re:Lightbulb on the internet? (Score:5, Funny)
Gonna be real fun when the local script kiddie turns your house into a disco.
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You are intending to have 256^6 individually controllable lights/components in your house? Or are you planning on exposing some number of lights in your house to the public internet where they would have to share out of the possible addresses?
-Rick
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you would only need ipv6 if you wanted your dvd player to dim someone else's lights. There are plenty of ways people connect and control electronic things together without 2^64 addressees.
If you search "X10 lighting" you will find at least one of the many existing solutions to your problem.
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For those too lazy to get up and control their lights themselves... And what if I want the movie playing in the background while I do something else in the living room? I toss movies on when cleaning my fish tanks or hamster cages. I've also been known to toss movies on for backgrounds at parties. Etc... Etc...
The last damn thing I want to d
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Trivial?
How does the DVD player know which lights to dim, or how far to dim them? There's a lot more than just providing data connections ("mechanism"), there also needs to be configuration data ("this light is in that room") and policy ("when a movie starts in some room, dim the lights in that same room by 90%", "if the fire alarm goes off, turn all lights to full brightness regardless of other rules", etc).
Since you need a central controller to implement the policy anyway, why would you want internet conn
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Why would anyone want to have a light bulb with a data connection?
Yeah, well come back when my candles can have a data connection.
And my lawn. And my walking stick.
Now get off the first one or I'll wave the second !
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Get off your candles or you'll wave your lawn?
Re:Lightbulb on the internet? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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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.
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No - SKU says that an item is a particular model.
All Ninteno Wii's in the store will have the same SKU. All "Super TurboTron 400k Devastator" action figures will carry a diffent SKU from the Wii's, but amongst themselves it will be the same.
What the GP is saying is that Wal-mart could identify one of those action figures from the other using this. So if your kid breaks his Wii that's out of warranty, you couldn't go buy a new one, swap them out, and then return the old broken one asking for a refund.
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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
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you mean "isn't that exactly what RFID does?"
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if you replace ipv6 with RFID you get the current state of things.
If all you have is a hammer, suddenly everything looks like a nail.
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Why would anyone want to have a light bulb with a data connection?
That was my first question too. Should we use more technology just because we can?
Addressable light bulbs might be great for legislated, remote or automatic control of energy reduction, but what about the waste when the bulb fails? There's a switching supply that gets tossed every time a CFL fails.
It would pave the way for a webcam in every light bulb. Should our light bulbs have firewalls?
Will someone engineer a light bulb that streams th
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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
Re: Better than that (Score:4, Interesting)
> 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 ?
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A program you have just launched is trying to turn on your lights. Cancel or Allow.
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Here's a link to my lightbulb on the internet: http://mcternan.co.uk/MAD/ [mcternan.co.uk]
It's an ambient device, and while only IPv4, but it does run on a lovely ATmega168 and support DHCP, AutoIP, NMNS and has a HTTP tiny client.
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Who the hell would put bathroom light power settings under the file menu? Edit maybe, but this hardly seems like an appropriate use of menus.
Better than one of those god-awful treeview preference windows I guess.
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Why would anyone want to have a light bulb with a data connection?
Maybe it could google to find out how many X's it takes to screw it in?
Re:Lightbulb on the internet? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Please specify OS licence (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Linux? (Score:2)
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It likely wouldn't interact nicely with all the other networking functionality provided by linux--throttling, filtering, packet mangling, multiple routing tables, varying levels of hardware offload, etc.
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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 [youtube.com]
And you can browse some of the documentation. It is fully IPv6 compliant, hence should work with anything...
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Lightbulb? (Score:5, Interesting)
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? (Score:5, Interesting)
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? (Score:4, Funny)
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Not only will your toothbrush have an IP address, but even the packaging it came in!
The IP stack isn't the limiting factor (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Simple security for simple devices... Maybe it would just be easier for the lightbulb to only accept commands from the local subnet?
IIGS (Score:2)
This would be freaking awesome, if I could afford an ethernet card, ram card, and transwarp GS for my IIGS. But hey, it plays Ultima, so I'm not complaining.
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IIgs is a sweet machine. I think it was a better road to personal computers than the Macintosh, which was almost 3x the price. But did Apple do much with the 65816 cpus beyond the two releases of the IIgs, I think not.
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Yeah, it's impressive what it can do. But it's a little slow for a lot of applications. There are people home building ethernet cards, ide controllers, and RAM expansions, but no one's making home brew accelerator cards. The last one sold on ebay went for nearly $300.
There's A Reason For All Those Bits... (Score:2)
"When every lightbulb has an IP address, the vast address range of IPv6 sounds like a pretty good idea."
Sigh. It would be nice of the know-nothings who keep mocking IPv6 for its 128-bit address space would read RFC 4941 [ietf.org], and take the time to comprehend what it means, before spouting off.
Which way is this impressive? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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/ [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.
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Additionally IPv6 supports a ton of new features [wikipedia.org] so the fact they can fit eve
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Considering the address space of IPv6 is 128K
Huh? An IPv6 address is 128bits, i.e. 16bytes. Add another byte for the netmask if you want to support non-/64-netmasks.
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Considering the address space of IPv6 is 128Kb, it would be difficult to meet your requirement of 301 bytes.
You mean 128 bits = 16 bytes? It's possible you could something simple up and running in 301 bytes, if this is anything like full IPv6 support then I'm more impressed.
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While the 11 KB code footprint might not be all that impressive (altough I think it is), the 13 is very impressive for an IPv6 stack. I haven't RTFA but if it accepts a largeish number of simultaneous connections, I highly doubt they got it working at all with that kind of footprint.
Heck, 13KB is only slightly over the space required to load a 64 by 64 24 bits bitmap in memory. And you haven't displayed it yet.
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Nope, but 640K is enough for *anything*.
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in the ipv6 future (Score:2)
your lightbulb will spam you with really short emails
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no (Score:2)
i said that your zombie bot lightbulb would spam you
not flirt with you on twitter ;-)
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dateline november 12, 2016: (Score:3, Funny)
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"
"IPv6 compliant IPv6 stack"? (Score:2)
An this, ladies and gentlemen.... (Score:2)
...is what we need to replace X10: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.10 [wikipedia.org]
That, and some way to secure this stuff. Wouldn't want the neighbors to turn on our sauna while I'm at the summer cottage now would I?
Re: memory usage of less than 2 kilobytes (Score:2)
> memory usage of less than 2 kilobytes
Not with some nicely fragmented traffic, it's not. :)
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Compliance only requires reassembling fragments two packets long. It can do this. The memory usage (assuming it's designed like uIP - I've not looked in detail) is statically configured at compile time, so if you want longer packet reassembly then you need to tweak it, but if you're running on a 6502 with 64KB of RAM you probably don't want to.
This is a really great development (and Adam Dunkels is a supreme hacker). Sensor networks and other low power applications, where you might have a few hundred de
Gosh it's gong to get crazy... (Score:2)
I wonder how long it'll take for "everything" "human made" to be assigned an IP address? I don't see why my socks or undies need an IP address, but sooner or later...
I'm waiting for RFID or something similar to get going widespread and for our houses to do an inventory of all the crap that we bring into them.
I wonder how long it'll take to combine IPv6 with RFID and these types of devices and say a 1/2 GB of storage for less than $.001
Will my bottle of equate pain reliever with 100 caplets have it's own IP
Are you NUTS? (Score:2)
When every lightbulb has an IP address, the vast address range of IPv6 sounds like a pretty good idea.
Right, because I want to communicate with every lightbulb in my home, and so does everyone across the globe.
Or, and I'm just spitballing here, we COULD just leave them off the grid, as, you know, LIGHTBULBS and quit connecting things together just because we can...
Actually that's a pretty good idea (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
World's Smallest Stack (Score:2)
IPV6 overlords (Score:2)
Photoshop Please!!! (Score:3, Funny)
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When every lightbulb has an IP address (Score:2)
The world will self-destruct due to the stupidity.
DRM (Score:2, Insightful)
Who turns on yourlight? (Score:2)
Ok I know we are not necessarily talking about light bulbs but we are talking intelligent appliances, each with their own address so they can be connected to the big wide world.
The thing is that even a dumb NAT makes a simple firewall ensuring that items behind it must deliberately expose themselves to the Internet. Is a device with a 12K internet implementation even going to have any kind of security implemented so that only I can switch my lights on?
I really like the idea of home devices that can communic
DNA vs IPv6 Addresses (Score:2)
Why not use a DNA sequence rather than an IPv6 address? How many bits are there in a DNA Sequence. It seems to be encodeable in a very small space smaller than cells. It also give more important information than just subnet or vendor information.
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Sure. It'll be mandatory in those new UK "eco villages" the government is talking about. Along like charging you for leaving town, and the mandatory composting toilets. And I suspect the reeducation and orientation films will be spectacular as well. Eco Gulag. Well, that's unfair. Maybe Eco Ghetto.
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Consumer pay-as-you-go electricity meters already address that by using a random delay on power-up before connecting the consumer. Can say they all do, but the ones I wrote s/w for did.