Politecnico di Milano

Advanced Network Technologies Laboratory

Constrained Application Protocol

(CoAP)

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 Background  
o  GOAL:  to  enable  web-­‐based  services  in  
constrained  wireless  networks  
n  8  bit  micro-­‐controllers  
n  limited  memory  
n  low-­‐power  networks  
o  Problem:  WEB  solu@on  are  hardly  applicable  
o  Solu@on:  re-­‐design  web-­‐based  services  for  
constrained  networks  -­‐>  COAP  

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 How  Does  the  Web  Work?  
o  Resources  in  the  Web  are:  
n  managed  by  servers    
n  iden@fied  by  URIs    
n  accessed  synchronously  by  
clients  through  request/
response  paradigms  
o  In  a  word,  Representa@onal    
State  Transfer  (REST)    

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URL Resolution

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 Request/Response
Transaction

o  Other  common  HTTP  methods:  PUT,  POST,  

DELETE  

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The CoAP Architecture

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CoAP Design Requirements

See draft-shelby-core-coap-req

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 CoAP At a Glance
o  Embedded web transfer protocol (coap://)
o  Asynchronous transaction model
o  UDP binding with reliability and multicast support
o  GET, POST, PUT, DELETE methods
o  URI support
o  4 byte header
o  Subset of MIME types and HTTP response codes
o  Built-in discovery
o  Optional observation and block transfer

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 COAP  Messaging  Basics  
o  Transport:
n  (mainly) UDP binding
o  Message Exchange between Endpoints
n  Messages with 4 bytes header (shared by request and
responses) containing a message ID (16 bits)
n  Reliable exchange through Confirmable Messages which
must be acknowledged (through ACK or Reset Messages).
Simple Stop-and-Wait retransmission with exponential back-
off.
n  Unreliable exchange through Non-Confirmable Message
n  Duplicate detection for both confirmable and non-confirmable
messages (through message ID)

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COAP  Messaging  

Message ID

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 COAP Message Semantics
o  REST Request/Response piggybacked
on CoAP Messages
o  Method, Response Code and Options
(URI, content-type etc.)

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COAP  Request/Response  Examples  
Message ID

Token

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COAP:  Separate  Response  

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COAP:  Non-­‐confirmable  Request  

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 Message Header (4 bytes)
!
!
! 0 1 2 3!
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1!
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+!
|Ver| T | TKL | Code | Message ID |!
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+!
| Token (if any, TKL bytes) ...!
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+!
| Options (if any) ...!
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+!
|1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1| Payload (if any) ...!
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+!
!
!
!
!
Ver - Version (1)!
!
T – Message Type (Confirmable, Non-Confirmable, Acknowledgement, Reset)!
!
TKL- Token Length, if any, the number of Token bytes after this header!
!
Code - Request Method (1-10) or Response Code (40-255)!
!
Message ID – 16-bit identifier for matching responses!
!
Token – Optional response matching token

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 Option Format
!
!
!
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7!
+---------------+---------------+!
| | |!
| Option Delta | Option Length | 1 byte!
| | |!
+---------------+---------------+!
\ \!
/ Option Delta / 0-2 bytes!
\ (extended) \!
+-------------------------------+!
\ \!
/ Option Length / 0-2 bytes!
\ (extended) \!
+-------------------------------+!
\ \!
/ /!
\ \!
/ Option Value / 0 or more bytes!
\ \!
/ /!
\ \!
+-------------------------------+!
!
!
!
Option Delta - Difference between this option type and the previous!
!
Length - Length of the option value!
!
Value - The value of Length bytes immediately follows Length

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 Base Specification Options
!
!
+-----+---+---+---+---+----------------+--------+--------+----------+!
| No. | C | U | N | R | Name | Format | Length | Default |!
+-----+---+---+---+---+----------------+--------+--------+----------+!
| 1 | x | | | x | If-Match | opaque | 0-8 | (none) |!
| 3 | x | x | - | | Uri-Host | string | 1-255 | (see |!
| | | | | | | | | below) |!
| 4 | | | | x | ETag | opaque | 1-8 | (none) |!
| 5 | x | | | | If-None-Match | empty | 0 | (none) |!
| 7 | x | x | - | | Uri-Port | uint | 0-2 | (see |!
| | | | | | | | | below) |!
| 8 | | | | x | Location-Path | string | 0-255 | (none) |!
| 11 | x | x | - | x | Uri-Path | string | 0-255 | (none) |!
| 12 | | | | | Content-Format | uint | 0-2 | (none) |!
| 14 | | x | - | | Max-Age | uint | 0-4 | 60 |!
| 15 | x | x | - | x | Uri-Query | string | 0-255 | (none) |!
| 16 | | | | | Accept | uint | 0-2 | (none) |!
| 20 | | | | x | Location-Query | string | 0-255 | (none) |!
| 35 | x | x | - | | Proxy-Uri | string | 1-1034 | (none) |!
| 39 | x | x | - | | Proxy-Scheme | string | 1-255 | (none) |!
+-----+---+---+---+---+----------------+--------+--------+----------+!
!
C=Critical, U=Unsafe, N=NoCacheKey, R=Repeatable!

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 Dealing with Packet Loss

o  Stop  and  Wait  approach  

o  Repeat  a  request  aSer  a  @me-­‐out  in  case  
ACK  (or  RST)  is  not  coming  back  
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 Back-­‐Off  Details  
o  Ini@al  @me-­‐out  set  to:    
n  Rand  [ACK_TIMEOUT,  ACK_TIMEOUT  *  
ACK_RANDOM_FACTOR]  ([2s,  3s])  
o  When  @me-­‐out  expires  and  the  transmission  counter  is  
less  than  MAX_RETRANSMIT  (4)  
n  retransmit  
n  Increase  transmission  counter  
n  double  the  @me-­‐out  value  
o  The  procedure  is  repeated  un@l  
n  A  ACK  is  received  
n  A  RST  message  is  received  
n  the  transmission  counter  exceeds  MAX_RETRANSMIT  
n  the  total  aaempt  dura@on  exceeds  MAX_TRANSMIT_WAIT  
(93s)  

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Proxying and caching

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 COAP  ObservaKon  
o  PROBLEM:    
n  REST  paradigm  is  oSen  “PULL”  type,  that  is,  
data  is  obtained  by  issuing  an  explicit  request  
n  Informa@on/data  in  WSN  is  oSen  periodic/
triggered  (e.g.,  get  me  a  temperature  sample  
every  2  seconds  or  get  me  a  warning  if  
temperature  goes  below  5°C)  
o  SOLUTION:  use  Observa@on  on  COAP  
resources  

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Observation

See draft-ietf-core-observe

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 COAP  Block  Transfer  
o  PROBLEM:  avoid  segmenta@on  in  the  lower  
layers  (IPv6)  
o  SOLUTION:  COAP  Block  Transfer  Mode  
n  brings  up  fragmenta@on  at  the  applica@on  layer    

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 Block transfer

o  Block2  Op@on  added  to  messages  

n  nr=incremental  block  number  within  original  data  
n  m=more  blocks  flag  
n  sz=block  size  
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 Discovery & Semantics
o  Resource Discovery
n  GOAL: Discovering the links hosted by
CoAP (or HTTP) servers
GET /.well-known/core?optional_query_string

n  Returns a link-header style format

o  URL, relation, type, interface, content-type etc.

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 CoRE Resource Discovery

!
!
!
!
!
!
!
</dev/bat>;obs;if="";rt="ipso:dev-bat";ct="0",!
</dev/mdl>;if="";rt="ipso:dev-mdl";ct="0",!
</dev/mfg>;if="";rt="ipso:dev-mfg";ct="0 ,!
</pwr/0/rel>;obs;if="";rt="ipso:pwr-rel";ct="0",!
</pwr/0/w>;obs;if="";rt="ipso:pwr-w";ct="0",!
</sen/temp>;obs;if="";rt="ucum:Cel";ct="0"!

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 Getting Started with CoAP
o  Open source implementations:
n  Java CoAP Library Californium
n  C CoAP Library Erbium
n  libCoAP C Library
n  jCoAP Java Library
n  OpenCoAP C Library
n  TinyOS and Contiki include CoAP support
o  Firefox has a CoAP plugin called Copper
o  Wireshark has CoAP plugin

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