The nRF5 IoT SDK provides an implementation of an IPv6 stack.

Figure 1 illustrates what is usually referred to as an IP stack. Some implementations additionally include Application Layer protocols like MQTT and CoAP as part of the IP stack.

Figure 1: IPv6 stack

Nordic's implementation of an IPv6 stack that is provided with this SDK includes only UDP as transport protocol.

It is possible to port a third-party embedded IP stack and use it instead of the provided IP stack. However, only third-party stacks that support IPv6 can be ported for use with the nRF5 IoT SDK. As an example of such a third-party IP stack, a ported version of lwIP (Lightweight IP) is included in the IoT SDK. lwIP supports IPv4 and IPv6, but the SDK examples use only IPv6. See lwIP stack on nRF5x for details.

Nordic's IPv6 stack does not need a separate stack driver. However, if you use a third-party stack, a network driver is usually required.