A Review of Intrusion Detection Systems in RPL Routing Protocol Based on Machine Learning for Internet of Things Applications

IPv6 routing protocol for low-power and lossy networks (RPL) has been developed as a routing agent in low-power and lossy networks (LLN), where nodes’ resource constraint nature is challenging. This protocol operates at the network layer and can create routing and optimally distribute routing information between nodes. RPL is a low-power, high-throughput IPv6 routing protocol that uses distance vectors. Each sensor-to-wire network router has a collection of fixed parents and a preferred parent on the path to the Destination-oriented directed acyclic graph (DODAG) graph’s root in steady-state. Each router part of the graph sends DODAG information object (DIO) control messages and specifies its rank within the graph, indicating its position within the network relative to the root. When a node receives a DIO message, it determines its network rank, which must be higher than all its parents’ rank, and then continues sending DIO messages using the trickle timer. As a result, DODAG begins at the root and eventually extends to encompass the whole network. This paper is the first review to study intrusion detection systems in the RPL protocol based on machine learning (ML) techniques to the best of our knowledge. The complexity of the new attack models identified for RPL and the efficiency of ML in intelligent and collaborative threats detection, and the issues of deploying ML in challenging LLN environments underscore the importance of research in this area. The analysis is done using research sources of “Google Scholar,” “Crossref,” “Scopus,” and “Web of Science” resources. The evaluations are assessed for studies from 2016 to 2021. The results are illustrated with tables and figures.