3.7.1. Greediness and Instability (Avidité et instabilité)

A node is greedy if it attempts to move deeper (increase Rank) in the DODAG Version in order to increase the size of the parent set or improve some other metric. Once a node has joined a DODAG Version, RPL disallows certain behaviors, including greediness, in order to prevent resulting instabilities in the DODAG Version.

Suppose a node is willing to receive and process a DIO message from a node in its own sub-DODAG and, in general, a node deeper than itself. In this case, a possibility exists that a feedback loop is created, wherein two or more nodes continue to try and move in the DODAG Version while attempting to optimize against each other. In some cases, this will result in instability. It is for this reason that RPL limits the cases where a node may process DIO messages from deeper nodes to some form of local repair. This approach creates an "event horizon", whereby a node cannot be influenced beyond some limit into an instability by the action of nodes that may be in its own sub-DODAG.