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If all they do is connect to the hub and then the hub controls all external access then that's fine. I'm just unclear as to why there is so much talk about IPv6

If all they do is connect to the hub and then the hub controls all external access then that's fine. I'm just unclear as to why there is so much talk about IPv6/cloud/TCP/UDP for something that is only talking to a local hub. I mean I totally get you can use all of that (save for "cloud") 100% locally but if that were the case I'd expect more mention of that. I'm ok with using wifi-adjacent for communication, internally but I do not all my "thread" devices to have internet access (local or external).

bisby 4y ago
> Bluetooth Low Energy for provisioning via a QR code, while it relies on Wi-Fi for high-data rate connectivity and Thread for low-data-rate communications. They will only use "thread" for low data rate communications. They will all have Wi-Fi. thus the ipv6/cloud/tcp/udp talk. I want _just_ thread out of these things. I want my devices to talk to my zwave/zigbee/thread network and to not talk to the cloud without my permission.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  > They will all have Wi-Fi. AFAICT, devices that don't need high-data rate connectivity aren't required to have WiFi. IOW a thread camera will have WiFi but a thread light switch doesn't have to.
  - clairity 4y ago
    yup, i should have noted that wrinkle in my original comment. some devices will have wifi connectivity built in because they need the bandwidth (and maybe the wider access too), but many won't, because they don't need the bandwidth nor the higher power consumption that comes with it. zigbee/thread-only devices can't route to the wider internet directly because of protocol differences, which is why it needs the border router, but obviously wifi connected devices can. what matter does is standardizes this combo behavior across devices for interoperability.
  - bisby 4y ago
    If some devices aren't required to have WiFi, then how do they effectively mesh with other devices? If I have a camera on the far side of my house, and then have a daisy chain of light switches back to my hub... the camera can communicate over zigbee/thread back to the hub to get low data instructions. and all the switches can get on/off commands.... but the camera has to communicate all the way back to the hub via WiFi. Which makes the WiFi not really a mesh, but a standard WiFi connect to the hub. And I assume there is no way to make sure that the camera never connects to the internet without setting up firewall rules on my router. Because the announcement specifically calls out the ability for smart devices to phone home as a perk, I imagine blocking devices from phoning home isn't an option, and you have to assume that any device with WiFi will attempt to phone home even if it's not "smart". If there was a way on hubs to have mobile phone like permissions. "This device can use local WiFi" and "This device can access the internet for Smart stuff" as separate permissions, I might be ok. But since most WiFi IoT devices are dumb and just punch a tunnel through your firewall so you can access them with a mobile app and wind up in botnets, I don't have a lot of faith in IoT companies to do it right, so until I can be assured (and verify myself) that WiFi doesn't mean "can phone home", theres no way in hell Im going to use Matter wifi devices.
    - vineyardmike 4y ago
      > If some devices aren't required to have WiFi, then how do they effectively mesh with other devices? Thread is a mesh protocol. They won’t wifi mesh a camera. > Which makes the WiFi not really a mesh, but a standard WiFi connect to the hub. Yea. > Because the announcement specifically calls out the ability for smart devices to phone home as a perk It is a perk to some. > until I can be assured (and verify myself) that WiFi doesn't mean "can phone home", theres no way in hell Im going to use Matter wifi devices. Some devices will some won’t. Surely some devices will advertise being local only. Some companies won’t won’t the expense of a server. Some matter devices won’t need wifi at all (lights). You might be more comfortable with them instead of writing it all off. > wind up in botnets Ironically cheaper devices may bet better off here. They’re probably too cheap to use anything but embedded code instead of embedded Linux so there’s less attack surface (excluding vendor provided). Matter provides a secure channel to share OTA updates (eg through a thread hub) that is signed by the vendor. So this should be a step in the right direction in terms of security.
jcrawfordor 4y ago
The idea of thread is that it is basically IPv6 over Zigbee, in the form of 6LoWPAN which is an IPv6 stack optimized for low-power devices with an addressing, discovery, and routing mechanism designed to work well on mesh networks like Zigbee. To some extent, Thread and Matter are direct replacements for Z-wave at different levels of the stack. There are some different pros/cons between the two though. The major advantage of 6LoWPAN is that it shares a lot of the design and implementation with existing network stacks and can be carried directly over IP networks. This is expected to make more complex 6LoWPAN topologies much easier to implement (e.g. 6LoWPAN traffic can be easily forwarded over the internet by a gateway). None of this is really anything that can't be done with Z-wave, but 6LoWPAN makes it easier by having a lot of common design and implementation with ubiquitous IP stacks. Matter itself has the major advantage of being a newer and higher-level design than Z-Wave which should result in more consistent interoperability of a wider range of devices. Z-wave will probably remain superior for battery-powered sensors into the future, because Thread doesn't allow for the extremely aggressive sleep schedules (e.g. sleep mode for 18 hours at a time between supervisions for security sensors) that Z-Wave does... although we can of course debate how wise it is to only perform supervision every 18 hours, even if UL allows it for burglar alarms.
- azdle 4y ago
  I believe would be more accurate to say it's Zigbee over IPv6. IIRC Zigbee is: 802.15.4 -> "Zigbee" And my (mostly incomplete) understanding of matter is it's: 802.15.4 -> 6LoWPAN -> Thread -> "The device model of Zigbee"-like Application Layer (for thread devices)
  - jcrawfordor 4y ago
    I'm using the terminology in a confusing way. Thread and Zigbee are both protocols on top of 802.15.4, but to be fair to myself there is a really common tendency to refer to "bare" 802.15.4 as Zigbee mostly because of the history. Zigbee is a very "thin" protocol though compared to Thread which is a lot more ambitious, but at the same time Zigbee goes more into application space... which kind of makes the point that Thread and Matter are a lot more "detailed" than Zigbee, which is minimalistic to the degree that interoperability of Zigbee products has always been very poor. This is one of the major reasons that Z-Wave mostly replaced Zigbee in the "smart home" space. It standardizes more functionality that Zigbee does. Thread and particularly Matter, in turn, standardize even more than Z-Wave (e.g. many of the things that are Z-wave config "mystery registers" that vary between manufacturers are included in Matter specs).

bisby 4y ago

> Bluetooth Low Energy for provisioning via a QR code, while it relies on Wi-Fi for high-data rate connectivity and Thread for low-data-rate communications. They will only use "thread" for low data rate communications. They will all have Wi-Fi. thus the ipv6/cloud/tcp/udp talk. I want _just_ thread out of these things. I want my devices to talk to my zwave/zigbee/thread network and to not talk to the cloud without my permission.

bryanlarsen 4y ago
> They will all have Wi-Fi. AFAICT, devices that don't need high-data rate connectivity aren't required to have WiFi. IOW a thread camera will have WiFi but a thread light switch doesn't have to.
- clairity 4y ago
  yup, i should have noted that wrinkle in my original comment. some devices will have wifi connectivity built in because they need the bandwidth (and maybe the wider access too), but many won't, because they don't need the bandwidth nor the higher power consumption that comes with it. zigbee/thread-only devices can't route to the wider internet directly because of protocol differences, which is why it needs the border router, but obviously wifi connected devices can. what matter does is standardizes this combo behavior across devices for interoperability.
- bisby 4y ago
  If some devices aren't required to have WiFi, then how do they effectively mesh with other devices? If I have a camera on the far side of my house, and then have a daisy chain of light switches back to my hub... the camera can communicate over zigbee/thread back to the hub to get low data instructions. and all the switches can get on/off commands.... but the camera has to communicate all the way back to the hub via WiFi. Which makes the WiFi not really a mesh, but a standard WiFi connect to the hub. And I assume there is no way to make sure that the camera never connects to the internet without setting up firewall rules on my router. Because the announcement specifically calls out the ability for smart devices to phone home as a perk, I imagine blocking devices from phoning home isn't an option, and you have to assume that any device with WiFi will attempt to phone home even if it's not "smart". If there was a way on hubs to have mobile phone like permissions. "This device can use local WiFi" and "This device can access the internet for Smart stuff" as separate permissions, I might be ok. But since most WiFi IoT devices are dumb and just punch a tunnel through your firewall so you can access them with a mobile app and wind up in botnets, I don't have a lot of faith in IoT companies to do it right, so until I can be assured (and verify myself) that WiFi doesn't mean "can phone home", theres no way in hell Im going to use Matter wifi devices.
  - vineyardmike 4y ago
    > If some devices aren't required to have WiFi, then how do they effectively mesh with other devices? Thread is a mesh protocol. They won’t wifi mesh a camera. > Which makes the WiFi not really a mesh, but a standard WiFi connect to the hub. Yea. > Because the announcement specifically calls out the ability for smart devices to phone home as a perk It is a perk to some. > until I can be assured (and verify myself) that WiFi doesn't mean "can phone home", theres no way in hell Im going to use Matter wifi devices. Some devices will some won’t. Surely some devices will advertise being local only. Some companies won’t won’t the expense of a server. Some matter devices won’t need wifi at all (lights). You might be more comfortable with them instead of writing it all off. > wind up in botnets Ironically cheaper devices may bet better off here. They’re probably too cheap to use anything but embedded code instead of embedded Linux so there’s less attack surface (excluding vendor provided). Matter provides a secure channel to share OTA updates (eg through a thread hub) that is signed by the vendor. So this should be a step in the right direction in terms of security.

jcrawfordor 4y ago

The idea of thread is that it is basically IPv6 over Zigbee, in the form of 6LoWPAN which is an IPv6 stack optimized for low-power devices with an addressing, discovery, and routing mechanism designed to work well on mesh networks like Zigbee. To some extent, Thread and Matter are direct replacements for Z-wave at different levels of the stack. There are some different pros/cons between the two though. The major advantage of 6LoWPAN is that it shares a lot of the design and implementation with existing network stacks and can be carried directly over IP networks. This is expected to make more complex 6LoWPAN topologies much easier to implement (e.g. 6LoWPAN traffic can be easily forwarded over the internet by a gateway). None of this is really anything that can't be done with Z-wave, but 6LoWPAN makes it easier by having a lot of common design and implementation with ubiquitous IP stacks. Matter itself has the major advantage of being a newer and higher-level design than Z-Wave which should result in more consistent interoperability of a wider range of devices. Z-wave will probably remain superior for battery-powered sensors into the future, because Thread doesn't allow for the extremely aggressive sleep schedules (e.g. sleep mode for 18 hours at a time between supervisions for security sensors) that Z-Wave does... although we can of course debate how wise it is to only perform supervision every 18 hours, even if UL allows it for burglar alarms.

azdle 4y ago
I believe would be more accurate to say it's Zigbee over IPv6. IIRC Zigbee is: 802.15.4 -> "Zigbee" And my (mostly incomplete) understanding of matter is it's: 802.15.4 -> 6LoWPAN -> Thread -> "The device model of Zigbee"-like Application Layer (for thread devices)
- jcrawfordor 4y ago
  I'm using the terminology in a confusing way. Thread and Zigbee are both protocols on top of 802.15.4, but to be fair to myself there is a really common tendency to refer to "bare" 802.15.4 as Zigbee mostly because of the history. Zigbee is a very "thin" protocol though compared to Thread which is a lot more ambitious, but at the same time Zigbee goes more into application space... which kind of makes the point that Thread and Matter are a lot more "detailed" than Zigbee, which is minimalistic to the degree that interoperability of Zigbee products has always been very poor. This is one of the major reasons that Z-Wave mostly replaced Zigbee in the "smart home" space. It standardizes more functionality that Zigbee does. Thread and particularly Matter, in turn, standardize even more than Z-Wave (e.g. many of the things that are Z-wave config "mystery registers" that vary between manufacturers are included in Matter specs).