4.3. Point-to-Point Traffic

RPL DODAGs provide a basic structure for point-to-point (P2P) traffic. For a RPL network to support P2P traffic, a root must be able to route packets to a destination. Nodes within the network may also have routing tables to destinations. A packet flows towards a root until it reaches an ancestor that has a known route to the destination. As pointed out later in this document, in the most constrained case (when nodes cannot store routes), that common ancestor may be the DODAG root. In other cases, it may be a node closer to both the source and destination.

RPL also supports the case where a P2P destination is a 'one-hop' neighbor.

RPL neither specifies nor precludes additional mechanisms for computing and installing potentially more optimal routes to support arbitrary P2P traffic.