6LoWPAN is an acronym of IPv6 over Low power Wireless Personal Area Networks. 6LoWPAN is the name of a concluded working group in the Internet area of the IETF.
The 6LoWPAN concept originated from the idea that “the Internet Protocol could and should be applied even to the smallest devices,” and that low-power devices with limited processing capabilities should be able to participate in the Internet of Things.
The 6LoWPAN group has defined encapsulation and header compression mechanisms that allow IPv6 packets to be sent and received over IEEE 802.15.4 based networks.
IPv4 and IPv6 are the work horses for data delivery for local-area networks, metropolitan area networks, and wide-area networks such as the Internet.
Likewise, IEEE 802.15.4 devices provide sensing communication-ability in the wireless domain.
The base specification developed by the 6LoWPAN IETF group is RFC 4944 (updated by RFC 6282 with header compression, and by RFC 6775 with neighbor discovery optimizations).
(From Wikipedia)