Analysis of the interplay between RPL and the congestion control strategies for CoAP

Abstract The Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) is gaining attention as a standardised RESTful interface for the Internet of Things (IoT). Recent studies have focused on different congestion control strategies for CoAP, in order to ensure proper operation of large-scale IoT deployments. In this paper, we carry out a performance evaluation of different congestion control policies for CoAP in a realistic environment by exploiting WiSHFUL, a platform for large-scale experimentation of network architectures. Our goal is to analyse different congestion control policies and their interplay with the routing protocol in a real environment, where unstable links and route fluctuations are frequent, due to channel variability. The results of our experiments highlight that the dynamics of the routing protocol have a noticeable impact and can impair significantly the performance of the congestion control algorithm. Specifically, the influence of the routing protocol depends on the specific congestion control policy adopted: an aggressive policy that re-transmits messages more frequently, e.g. CoCoA, is more penalised than others, in terms of throughput.