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I've been gradually retiring my wifi smart devices in favor of Z-wave because I find them far more reliable and much easier to maintain and manage. It's also a

I've been gradually retiring my wifi smart devices in favor of Z-wave because I find them far more reliable and much easier to maintain and manage. It's also a little annoying having a pile of wifi devices whose only purpose is to manage an on-off state consume IP addresses on my network.

technofiend 7y ago
I share your need to name all my devices in the controller view. Hopefully zwave has better security support than typical IoT devices. I'd really prefer to use certificates rather than WPA passwords because password rotation requires a) I give vendors my passwords which they may not really secure in any way, b) often requires I use a vendor tool to rotate said password. It would be much preferable to have a standard way to store a certificate to the device. Today when the inevitable happens and someone leaves customer WPA passwords on an open S3 bucket, or they're exposed via cyber security break I have to update every device. It would be so much nicer to just go update my compromised device's certificate rather than the password for everything. Frankly I'd prefer certificates to passwords anyway because sooner or later I'm sure WEP2 itself will be broken.
1over137 7y ago
Consume IP addresses? There are a bazillion IP addresses. Or are you stuck on IPv4?
- orev 7y ago
  Pretty much everyone (especially at home) is using only IPv4. IPv6 is always perpetually on the horizon. The better argument would have been that using a /23 or /22 subnet should probably be enough for most home automation setups.
  - GhettoMaestro 7y ago
    5 years ago your comment was spot on. Now in the us it is common to see dual stack v4 v6 on residential and mobile connections.
    - orev 7y ago
      I’m more talking about what people are actually aware of. Yes, most systems have IPv6 enabled and use it when possible, but it’s mostly invisible. When you login to a device to setup the IP address, it’s still almost always IPv4. That’s just for the internal networks, which is what most home users are thinking about on this topic.
    - ocdtrekkie 7y ago
      Comcast and Verizon will dual stack you, sure. As the largest two ISPs, they're out of addresses. But a lot of other ISPs won't, my ISP doesn't support IPv6 at all.
- igetspam 7y ago
  Most wireless "smart" devices are IPv4 only but the RFC1918 space is sufficiently huge for a gone network. The annoying part comes in when you have to change the DHCP pool (lots of home hardware doesn't support multiple pools) and possibly re-ip your network. Why much with your network, just to reduce security? I'm a fan of zwave.
- smrk007 7y ago
  Some internet providers restrict users to the number of devices they may have connected to their WiFi network. Not sure if this is what they’re referring to, but possible.
  - ViViDboarder 7y ago
    How would that even be possible? Plus another router in an NAT everything behind it.
- melq 7y ago
  Even if you're on ipv4 and using the 192.168/16 network you've still got >65,000 addresses to work with.
  - GhettoMaestro 7y ago
    And 10/8! And 172.16/12!!
- slantyyz 7y ago
  I'm on IPV4. It's not about how many IP addresses I have available, it's that all those smart devices can pollute the list of devices connected my wifi network. I like to know what's on my wifi network, and because my memory isn't what it's used to be, I find myself having to assign names to all the smart wifi devices in my Unifi controller.
  - oflannabhra 7y ago
    A common solution (and one HomeKit enabled routers implement) is to relegate all IoT products to their own network
    - slantyyz 7y ago
      Sure, but I would still want to check that network's clients as well, so I would still want to identify the devices on that network to ensure that only my devices are on it. Either way, it's still an additional step compared to Z-wave. Other than the hub, I don't need to set up an IP network for my Z-wave devices to connect to at all.
      - ViViDboarder 7y ago
        I mean, I’m using Z-wave too, but you’re describing the same level of complexity. Either you set up a dedicated WiFi network and check that to see the status of IoT devices, or set up a dedicated Z-wave network and check that for the status of devices.
        slantyyz 7y ago
        For a z-wave device to pair to my hub, I need to put the hub itself in pairing mode. Unlike wifi devices, a zwave device can't just join my hub by knowing an SSID and password. Yes, I could do something similar with a wifi network and whitelisting mac addresses etc, but that's not nearly as simple as the way z-wave works. [addendum] When I talk about checking my network, I'm also not talking about status. With wifi, I'm checking to look for unexpected clients. I occasionally have a temporary freakout when I see an unknown device on my wifi that ended up being something that I bought, added and forgot about (like a media player), etc. That's not a concern I ever have with a z-wave network.

technofiend 7y ago

I share your need to name all my devices in the controller view. Hopefully zwave has better security support than typical IoT devices. I'd really prefer to use certificates rather than WPA passwords because password rotation requires a) I give vendors my passwords which they may not really secure in any way, b) often requires I use a vendor tool to rotate said password. It would be much preferable to have a standard way to store a certificate to the device. Today when the inevitable happens and someone leaves customer WPA passwords on an open S3 bucket, or they're exposed via cyber security break I have to update every device. It would be so much nicer to just go update my compromised device's certificate rather than the password for everything. Frankly I'd prefer certificates to passwords anyway because sooner or later I'm sure WEP2 itself will be broken.

1over137 7y ago

Consume IP addresses? There are a bazillion IP addresses. Or are you stuck on IPv4?

orev 7y ago
Pretty much everyone (especially at home) is using only IPv4. IPv6 is always perpetually on the horizon. The better argument would have been that using a /23 or /22 subnet should probably be enough for most home automation setups.
- GhettoMaestro 7y ago
  5 years ago your comment was spot on. Now in the us it is common to see dual stack v4 v6 on residential and mobile connections.
  - orev 7y ago
    I’m more talking about what people are actually aware of. Yes, most systems have IPv6 enabled and use it when possible, but it’s mostly invisible. When you login to a device to setup the IP address, it’s still almost always IPv4. That’s just for the internal networks, which is what most home users are thinking about on this topic.
  - ocdtrekkie 7y ago
    Comcast and Verizon will dual stack you, sure. As the largest two ISPs, they're out of addresses. But a lot of other ISPs won't, my ISP doesn't support IPv6 at all.
igetspam 7y ago
Most wireless "smart" devices are IPv4 only but the RFC1918 space is sufficiently huge for a gone network. The annoying part comes in when you have to change the DHCP pool (lots of home hardware doesn't support multiple pools) and possibly re-ip your network. Why much with your network, just to reduce security? I'm a fan of zwave.
smrk007 7y ago
Some internet providers restrict users to the number of devices they may have connected to their WiFi network. Not sure if this is what they’re referring to, but possible.
- ViViDboarder 7y ago
  How would that even be possible? Plus another router in an NAT everything behind it.
melq 7y ago
Even if you're on ipv4 and using the 192.168/16 network you've still got >65,000 addresses to work with.
- GhettoMaestro 7y ago
  And 10/8! And 172.16/12!!
slantyyz 7y ago
I'm on IPV4. It's not about how many IP addresses I have available, it's that all those smart devices can pollute the list of devices connected my wifi network. I like to know what's on my wifi network, and because my memory isn't what it's used to be, I find myself having to assign names to all the smart wifi devices in my Unifi controller.
- oflannabhra 7y ago
  A common solution (and one HomeKit enabled routers implement) is to relegate all IoT products to their own network
  - slantyyz 7y ago
    Sure, but I would still want to check that network's clients as well, so I would still want to identify the devices on that network to ensure that only my devices are on it. Either way, it's still an additional step compared to Z-wave. Other than the hub, I don't need to set up an IP network for my Z-wave devices to connect to at all.
    - ViViDboarder 7y ago
      I mean, I’m using Z-wave too, but you’re describing the same level of complexity. Either you set up a dedicated WiFi network and check that to see the status of IoT devices, or set up a dedicated Z-wave network and check that for the status of devices.
      - slantyyz 7y ago
        For a z-wave device to pair to my hub, I need to put the hub itself in pairing mode. Unlike wifi devices, a zwave device can't just join my hub by knowing an SSID and password. Yes, I could do something similar with a wifi network and whitelisting mac addresses etc, but that's not nearly as simple as the way z-wave works. [addendum] When I talk about checking my network, I'm also not talking about status. With wifi, I'm checking to look for unexpected clients. I occasionally have a temporary freakout when I see an unknown device on my wifi that ended up being something that I bought, added and forgot about (like a media player), etc. That's not a concern I ever have with a z-wave network.