DNS-based dynamic context resolution for SCHC

Abstract: LPWANs are networks characterised by the scarcity of their radio resources and their limited payload size. LoRaWAN offers an open, easy-to-deploy and efficient solution to operate a long-range network. To efficiently communicate using IPv6, the LPWAN working group from the IETF developed a solution called Static Context Header Compression (SCHC). It uses context rules, which are linked to a given End Device, to compress the IPv6 and UDP header. Since there may be a huge variety of End Devices profile, it makes sense to store the rules remotely and use a system to retrieve the profiles dynamically. In this paper we propose a mechanism based on DNS to find the context rules associated with an End Device, allowing it to be downloaded from an HTTP Server. We evaluate the corresponding delay added to the communications using experimental measurements from a real testbed.