CAPWAP%20and%20RFID

1
CAPWAP and RFID

• Margaret Wasserman, ThingMagic
• IETF 66, Montreal

2
Brief Outline

• Similarities and differences between 802.11 APs
  and RFID Readers
• Related work in EPCglobal
• RFID industry standards body
• Requests from the EPCglobal Reader Operations WG
• Minor requests, nothing RFID-specific
• Thoughts on DSP-only readers

3
802.11 AP vs RFID Reader

• Both moving towards centralized controller with
  remote radios
• Similar need to maintain firmware and
  configuration for the full system, not
  individual radios
• In RFID, data packetsgo to not thru the
  controller

Management
Controller
Radio
Radio
Radio
4
Introduction to EPCglobal

• EPCglobal is an industry standards body working
  on RFID standards, largely for the retail supply
  chain
• EPC Electronic Product Code
• EPCglobal is part of GS1, which is also
  responsible for the UPC and barcode standards
• For more information seehttp//www.epcglobalinc.
  com

5
EPCglobal Organization

• Broken into action groups
• Software Action Group (SAG)
• Hardware Action Group (HAG)
• Busiess Action Group (BAG)
• Each Action Group consists of several WGs
• CAPWAP currently being considered as a discovery
  and provisioning protocol by the Reader
  Operations (RO) WG in the SAG

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Request from EPCg RO WG

• Separate firmware download from reboot in the
  state table
• More scalable
• Allows trickle download with reboot at planned
  downtime
• Make a clearer distinction between CAPWAP base
  protocol and 802.11-specific control functions

7
DSP-Only RFID Readers

• DSP-only RFID Readers are quite common
• Most popular DSPs in the space are 16-bit systems
  optimized for multiplication, not addition
• AES takes a lot of cycles in this environment
• Not clear what we can do, given lack of other
  DTLS encryption bindings