4 ms·

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 hav

by 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.

by bisby 4y ago

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.