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Comment by joshstrange | Hacker News Reader

My biggest issue with Thread is (AFAICT) it gives each device access to the internet. That's the absolute last thing I want and the reason I went 100% Z-wave (with a handful of legacy zigbee devices). I want a single point of local hardware that my devices talk to and that hub can talk to the internet as needed but I don't want to have to vet every device or deal with companies going out of business.

As it stands now I don't care at all who made my Z-wave switches/bulbs/plugs, they could already be out of business for all I care, that's not the case with 90% of "smart home" shit I see online. "No hub" means "absolutely not" for me because that's a wifi device with full access to your network (unless you segment) and the internet.

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Yeah. I was very excited about this until i got to "Bluetooth Low Energy for provisioning" and I was like "oh.." and then "Wi-Fi for high-data rate connectivity" was a "oh. no thanks." That's a clear path to the internet and also using multiple radios so that if I lock down one thing I have to constantly worry about others.

As it stands I dont see this being a thing that benefits me. It is more likely that this pushes smart home manufacturers away from Zwave, and makes my life worse because now I can't buy IoT devices without granting them internet access. Then I have to go through and start setting up IoT VLANs to quarantine devices, and in some really shitty cases, Ive seen WiFi devices where the app sends a message to a server, and the server sends a message to the device... so I can't quarantine the device without modifying it or losing functionality (see MyQ garage door openers). The industry looks bleak.

Agree on all points of preferring Z-wave though and it's also what I use. However, Linus (of Linus Tech Tips) recently redid all the switches in his home with Zwave switches... and they had a firmware issue... And the company refused to publish firmware updates in any way except through "official" Zwave hubs, and not Home Assistant. It eventually got sorted out, but Zwave isn't necessarily intrinsically failproof either.

> Agree on all points of preferring Z-wave though and it's also what I use. However, Linus (of Linus Tech Tips) recently redid all the switches in his home with Zwave switches... and they had a firmware issue... And the company refused to publish firmware updates in any way except through "official" Zwave hubs, and not Home Assistant. It eventually got sorted out, but Zwave isn't necessarily intrinsically failproof either.

Yes, I followed that drama as well and the did eventually make the newer firmware available to HA and similar though that doesn't exactly negate anything I said. For new features/fixes you are dependent on the manufacturer but that's the same everywhere. The big difference is that if Linus' switch company went out of business then his switches would continue to work the same way they always did (bugs and all). But I do agree with you Z-wave isn't perfect and does sometimes require a little more knowledge to work with.

Thankfully I'm all set currently (aside from the SmartThings rug-pull that I have to deal with and finally move everything remaining to HA instead of using my ST hub as just a controller from HA) and I'm just going to sit tight over the next few years and see how things shake out before I upgrade/replace any of my gear.

I was just referring to your comment:

> As it stands now I don't care at all who made my Z-wave switches/bulbs/plugs, they could already be out of business for all I care

If the company was out of business and there was no way to get the newer firmware, LTT might have had issues. Also, buying a switch because it is advertised as having feature X, only to find out that feature X was added in a newer firmware than you have, and you can't get that firmware. That means it isn't just a "I dont care at all who made my product" scenario. It's much lower risk (especially if the feature you want is basic functionality rather than automation), but it's not 0 risk.

I agree with you that Z-wave is going to be 100% better than WiFi devices that call home and join a botnet, but I wanted to make sure it was clear that there is still room for issues.

Even if new firmware is out, you're not guaranteed to get it. Linus got it because he has millions of subscribers and if he makes a stink, companies have to listen. If you're a boring customer with just one twitter account at your disposal, you may never be able to update.

Firmware licensing or device distribution opportunity for Linus Tech Tips.

WiFi is only for devices that need it, like I'm thinking a "matter"-provisioned wireless security camera.

It definitely confuses the user story though, idk why they included wifi at all.

I suspect a big part is to allow bridges like the new IKEA hub. Lots of folks put those in wifi.

Based on my IoT devices I already have, any device that supports Matter will probably use Wi-Fi to ping back home whenever they can.

From the actual announcement:

> Wi-Fi enables Matter devices to interact over a high-bandwidth local network and allows smart home devices to communicate with the cloud.

If only there was a way to have it explicitly NOT communicate with the cloud. That's the last thing I want.

It’s the same as it always has been. You need to check in advance, if it’s an extra dumb device requiring internet or not.

I generally just block external internet access for smart devices on my wifi, but it'd be really nice if I didn't have to.

My AmpliFi router did this the other day. It added itself to HomeKit to create device specific firewall rules for iot devices on my network. The options were like “access everything, access whitelist of services, no access”. I turned on the whitelist but it broke everything :D

Not necessarily, because Wi-Fi is energy hungry and it will empty the battery in a short time. The Wi-Fi enabled CR123A battery powered Shelly devices I have exhibit shorter battery life than Zigbee devices operating on a CR2032 or CR2450 and the battery holds many more mAh. If yuo have an outlet or cable powered device then yes, they usually phone home.

Your first paragraph describes my reaction as well. The article's overture was a roller coaster.

> Zwave isn't necessarily intrinsically failproof either.

The one nice thing about it, above Zigbee, is that you can expect devices to work together. With Zigbee you frequently have to pair a device with a hub from the same manufacturer.

Although you can easily circumvent this with a cheap Zigbee USB controller, Raspberry Pi (or other computer) and something like Zigbee2MQTT. My IKEA bulbs, Xiaomi sensors and Philips remotes all work great as a mesh.

You would think so...

On the other hand, Zwave radio spectrum varies depending on region, so you need to be very careful that you don't spend hours troubleshooting something that doesn't work because it's a device intended for the EU market instead of US.

IIRC, Zigbee is better here.

Yep... cannot use US or EU market (at least I believe that's the case, based on [1] which mentions UK) z-wave gear here in Australia due to incompatible spectrum usage. And the AU market z-wave gear is about twice the price of the US equivalent, since it's low production volume.

[1] https://iot.stackexchange.com/a/2393

I have more zigbee than i do zwave, never had a problem with either pairing to my Nortek USB Hub

Aqara Zigbee devices are renowned for having a longer keepalive check-in period than many routers expect. So when they don’t check in on time, the router marks it as dead. Often, a quick tap of the setup button to re-announce it to its router will cause those routers to “unmark” it as dead—you don’t need to re-pair it. But it’s frustrating enough when it happens.

I have a handful of Aqara sensors that constantly dropped away, so I just flashed an XBee with router firmware and have it on a small USB battery that stays plugged in. That way power outages won’t cause issues with the “leave and rejoin” request that routers will issue to aged-out devices, which my Aqara devices seem to balk at.

I have 8 Aqara sensors (4 temp/pressure, 4 door/window contacts), one temperature sensor consistently has this issues, no others do. Used to be Deconz, now on Zigbee2MQTT with the Conbee 2.

I have a lot of Zigbee devices, and I've never experienced a pairing issue like this. I use Zigbee2MQTT with Home Assistant, with a electrolama ZZH USB stick - https://electrolama.com/projects/zig-a-zig-ah/

During my first attempt at home automation, I used to mess around with flashing custom firmware onto WiFi devices (Tasmota, ESPHome.) It was a huge pain whenever the hacking process stopped working (tuya-convert), and I had to open up the device, solder some wires, and flash the chip via USB serial.

Nowadays I can just buy any Zigbee product I want (usually from AliExpress), and get it set up in zigbee2mqtt without any extra steps. And it's all local within my home, and no hubs or cloud services required.

I think Zigbee is better for me because I have a lot of battery-powered devices, such as sensors for motion, door contacts, and temperature/humidity. I'm really impressed that the button batteries usually last for 1-2 years.

That's.... not a long time. The tire pressure sensors in your car have 7-10 year batteries running off the same standard lithium coin cell.

Sure, but it's long enough that I don't get annoyed when I need to change a battery. If I ever build or renovate a house then everything will be wired, but these are working really well for now.

You haven't had an issue because you are using z2m which tries to support everything. Try using a Philips Hue hub or Aqara or whatever and most devices will not work properly.

Where is the developer docs? The site leads to some document under solutions that needs to be downloaded to read. It is also not clear why a protocol specs or implementation should be categorized by solutions. Overall the site documentation lacks transparency.

Wikipedia article links to the key websites, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter_(standard)

I had less luck finding Matter with DuckDuckGo. Evidently a competitive search term (which is to be expected).

The whole idea of Matter is local control over IPv6. From what I understand, it is basically Zigbee's cluster library re-platformed on top of new encrypted mesh layer that runs on IPV6. This does technically mean that all such devices can send out arbitrary IPv6 packets, and for Ethernet and Wifi can even send out ipv4.

When operating via thread, those ipv6 packets are just using it as low powered wifi alternative for those packets. Both Wifi and Thread connections thus require two levels of joining. One for connection to the AP/thread mesh network, and one for the matter encrypted network. Ethernet based devices on the other hand, can simply join directly to the matter encrypted network.

BLE for joining can simplify this, as a controller can provide the needed info about thread or wifi, as well as the info needed to join the matter network.

----

Now I very much support local control. Most of my smart home devices right now are either Zigbee or Z-Wave. I have 9 z-wave devices (plus the home-assistant controller), and 4 Zigbee ones at the moment, although only 2 are in use. (These current ones will never upgeade to support matter over thread). I am waiting on he new inovelli switches which will initially run on zigbee, but I will probably later upgrade them to run on matter. (After I buy a new zigbee radio dongle that supports dual stack zigbee/thread operation, and home-assistant officially releases their support for doing that).

But those of us running home-assistant, or the like are not the real target market of Matter. For more typical users, they end up with a bunch of smart devices that are wither wifi based, or have their own hub. Each one has a seperate app. Some might be homekit compatible, some might be hue compatible (work via the hue hub and its app), some might be compatible with amazon Alexa via the cloud, some might work for Alexa via zigbee (but only if you have an echo model that supports zigbee). It is not easy for consumers to even be certain what works with what.

With Matter, every Matter device will be compatible with homekit, will be compatible with Alexa, will be compatible with google home, will be compatible with SmartThings. The only requirements are that your controller device have support for the general type of device in question, and if it is a Thread device you have at least one Thread "border router" (ip gateway, equivalent to wifi AP) in your matter network. Homepods for example include such a border router, and likely some future Amazon Echo models will too, and it has been suggested that some Wifi Routers will include that functionality too.

That is a huge win for the average consumer!

    As it stands now I don't care at all who made my Z-wave switches/bulbs/plugs

This is maybe an optimistic view of Z-wave in my mind... early on quality and reliability problems were nearly universal with Z-wave devices, and today I have a fairly short list of brands I trust (e.g. Zooz) after having been burned by a series of devices with various firmware bugs or just very poor lifespans. The best story I have is the lightbulb that would turn on every time it received an explorer packet, and thus every time my hub at the time ran a heal, which was of course scheduled at 2AM every day and not easy to disable due to the hub's poor firmware. This was years ago, but then there's still a surprising number of Z-wave devices on the market that are just Z-wave, not the poorly named Z-Wave Plus or Z-Wave Plus V2, and thus have significantly inferior network reliability if there are any changes in the environment. In any modestly challenging environment (e.g. battery powered device a few walls away from the nearest powered device) I have gotten used to having to try out multiple products before finding one that was reliable, and that was even after learning not to buy anything that wasn't at least "500 series" (Silicon Labs part number for Z-Wave Plus).

Even Enbrighten, a former GE brand and so ostensibly reputable (this of course depends on how familiar you are with the GE of today) is shipping some total garbage that they haven't even bothered to develop real documentation for. Curiously, I've found that some Enbrighten products and Zooz products are physically identical to the degree that I think they are both sourcing some of their hardware from the same manufacturer... but Zooz has very noticeably superior firmware.

I've got about 20 zwave devices by all of the manufacturers you mention on my network and they have all been very reliable after a year of use. I had a lot of reliability issues at the start, but they all ended up being due to two issues:

* Signal strength. Getting more repeaters and devices fixed this * Flaky service implementation. Uprading ZWave JS on Home Assistant and adding a monitor that got ZWave JS to ping devices when they were unavailable as made the system very reliable.

Thanks for the tip about Zooz, they do look nearly identical may have to pick up a few for additional switches.

I have had no need for any additional documentation for all of the GE / Enbrighten switches I have installed in my house. Other than how to wire it and how to get it in pairing mode, what else is there?

no, thread is a rebranding (and evolution) of the zigbee protocol, which is a low-power, local mesh network with no inherent internet connectivity. zigbee/thread devices work offline first, with switches that are an integral part of the local mesh network. these devices can also be connected to the internet through a hub/border router, if you so choose. matter is the umbrella brand name for the combo of BLE, wifi, and thread that provides a complete IoT ecosystem.

i have a bunch of zigbee devices (mostly ikea tradfri) that i'm eager to upgrade in the hopes that i get more reliability and speed out of my connected devices (mostly lighting).

Why the HELL do companies and whatnot keep rebranding from something INSANELY EASY to search like Zigbee to something ENTIRELY GENERIC like thread?

explodes

Because they didn't. The only thing that Thread shares with Zigbee is the radio. It's a completely different standard.

Zigbee Alliance renamed themselves to the CSA. Can companies still keep making Zigbee devices after Matter? Sure, it's not impossible, but it's not really going to happen much more than somebody producing anything else obsolete.

The fact of the matter is that Zigbee isn't competing with Matter, it's being replaced with Matter. Rebranding may not be the best choice of words, but I think you're missing the point.

Confederate States of America? Ballsy move.

I suspect it is desirable as one is supposed to search for the marketed products. The magic smoke that binds the device to the app or blinky lights is of little importance.

At least it wasn't Nintendo in charge of the naming, then it would be New ZigBee.

If it was MS, it would start as ZigbeeSpecial 1, followed by ZigBee 5 and be incompatible with ZigBee 3.0

edit: Just in case anyone is not following C# developments

Old: .NET 1.0 … -> .NET 4.7 -> .NET 4.8

New and not compatible: dotnetcore 1 … -> dotnetcore 3 -> .NET 5

And of course, there is their ORM which did not drop the "core" part, so for .NET 4.8 there is Entity Framework 6, the version for .NET 5 is called Entity Framework Core and reached 6 as well last year. For ASP.NET (that is, on .NET 4.8) MVC 5 is the current MVC solution, I think for ASP.NET Core (.NET 5) MVC 6 might be, but despite actually working with those technologies, I’m not sure.

ZigBii

because they do not want you searching for protocol compatiblity, they want you to lock into a vendor

they want you to look for "Alexa" or "Google Home" or "Apple HomeKit" labels, not "Zigbee" or "thread" or "zwave"

Drop formerly MassDrop, Wise formerly TransferWise

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).

> 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.

> 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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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)

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).

> This is one of the major reasons that Z-Wave mostly replaced Zigbee in the "smart home" space.

It did? I moved into a new home a year ago and have been outfitting it with smart devices. I have no real preference for Zigbee but ended up with a bunch of Zigbee devices and zero Z-Wave devices.

Me too, after getting two battery powered Wi-Fi enabled devices which are rather inconvenient. Z-Wave is somewhat better if you have a big house or many neighbours with 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi APs using the spectrum because it operates on the 868/908 MHz ISM band instead of the 2.4 GHz ISM band used by Zigbee and shared with Wi-Fi and BT devices. Lower frequency waves travel more easily through thick walls and further and the 868/908 band is also subject to airtime restrictions in order to prevent interference. ZigBee uses repeaters and more frequent updates to accomplish the same thing. Most wall plug powered ZigBee devices are also repeaters. You'll probably get more samples from battery powered ZigBee sensors than from devices either using Z-Wave (which has airtime limitations) or Wi-Fi (which is power hungry and the devices are in deep sleep most of the time).

Stating that Thread is a rebranding of Zigbee is incorrect. Both are based on 802.15.4 for their physical layer but the two are entirely separate and managed by different standards bodies (Zigbee under the Zigbee Alliance, now CSA - Thread under the Thread Group). Where some confusion may come is that Matter is now also under the CSA (just like Zigbee).

while you're technically correct, it's a rebranding from the (zigbee) consumer's perspective, via the CSA being a rebranding of the zigbee alliance. within that context, thread is the most direct analog of the zigbee protocol, as they're both implementations of 802.15.4 for low-power local mesh. consumers won't need to (and most won't want to) understand it deeper than that.

Matter/thread is nothing like zigbee, except the MAC layer is the same. For one, Thread uses IP(v6), and Zigbee does not use IP at all. This will make managing thread networks much more like managing normal networks (hopefully).

I don't know why you think your zigbee devices will be upgradeable to thread - that strikes me as quite unlikely, although perhaps physically possible depending on how much hardware offload the devices use.

> Matter/thread is nothing like zigbee, except the MAC layer is the same.

Matter actually uses an iteration of the Zigbee device model - from an application level they are actually somewhat similar

> I don't know why you think your zigbee devices will be upgradeable to thread - that strikes me as quite unlikely

Most Zigbee radios are dual Zigbee/Thread since both protocols are build on 802.15.4. I suspect that the limitation is going to be on manufacturers rather than hardware limitations

> My biggest issue with Thread is (AFAICT) it gives each device access to the internet.

Thread is a protocol, this is only as true as the statement "WiFi gives each device access to the internet".

It _can_ give devices access to the internet, but only if you plug your (border) router into an internet connection. (Or otherwise bridge the networks. Your border router could still have internet access itself without bridging the thread network out to the internet.)

Given that most people will use their one and only router for this, it means most of these devices will have access to the internet. Sure, you _might_ be able to prevent it if you jump through hoops (because it really is annoying to setup a second wifi network, at least in my experience) and assuming the devices don't fail if they can't phone home (and we can be sure some will). But everyone is much safer overall if the "common standard used by most people" did not use wifi.

> But everyone is much safer overall if the "common standard used by most people" did not use wifi.

What wireless protocol has the range to cover an entire house or lot? Bluetooth is sketchy beyond the same room, and I don't want to deploy a dozen hubs just to cover all my stuff...

Given that many if not most wired devices in a zigbee or zwave mesh can already perform this task (including lowly switches and light bulbs), I'm not sure how much of a problem that is. You only need one hub.

> But everyone is much safer overall if the "common standard used by most people" did not use wifi.

To be clear, Thread is not Wifi.

> It _can_ give devices access to the internet

My, maybe not-so-naive, assumption is that manufacturers will require an internet connection for some/all functionality because they can.

That's already the case right now today.

In the 80s my dad controlled the lights in our home using the Radio Shack plug 'n power system. Plug-in switches and the control box would talk to each other by sending signals through the home electrical wiring.

There was no need for wifi or Bluetooth or rc or anything funky like that. It was about as dumb as a smart home could get.

http://www.trs-80.org/plug-n-power/

Good ole' X10 that later became Insteon. I actually have Insteon for all the lights and fans in my house and am quite happy with it's performance. I've been considering a migration, but I'm holding out until I see how Matter/Thread do as an ecosystem first.

I miss Insteon. I know it's kinda-sorta-maybe-alive again but we'll see.

Insteon was simple and mostly just worked. Even my wife saw the benefit of the thing.

Being able to work without internet access is a requirement of the standard AFAICT.

>My biggest issue with Thread is (AFAICT) it gives each device access to the internet.

Uh what? This is definitely not the case with my nanoleaf bulbs..

Thread is an IPv6 bearing mesh network; and if you have a border router that has the appropriate IP routing rules, and your firewall allows it, your Nanoleaf bulbs can most certainly reach out to the internet (granted, they only have the concept of IPv6, so a majority of the internet is inaccessible if only because it is IPv4)

Any ideas if the HomePod Mini (probably the most popular Thread border router) grant broader internet access to Thread devices on the mesh network? I can't find any clear info about how this might work or how to test.

"If you allow the devices to access the internet they can access the internet" isn't really as doom and gloom as the parent is suggesting.

My understanding is it gives them an IPv6 address, but that does not mean they have internet access unless there is a hub that connects between the two.

There's no WiFi, they use Zigbee behind the scenes, what changed is that they are addressed via IP, but it's still a strictly local network.

> There's no WiFi

> Matter uses 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.

So you say no WiFi but the post specific says WiFi. And if there's wifi then I have to set up my network to ensure they don't have internet access, thats not something Im going to leave up to the honor system.

The WiFi is in the hub. You should read it more carefully.

Yes. it says "Wi-Fi for high-data rate connectivity and Thread for low-data-rate communications"

Wi-Fi in the hub but not in the devices would make no sense. Why have Wi-Fi in the hub if devices aren't going to use Wi-Fi to connect to it?

Also I went back, and searched the post for Wi-Fi, and the thing I quoted is the only reference to Wi-Fi. It uses Wi-Fi for high data rate connectivity. IE, a camera transferring data to the hub. so the camera has wifi. You can't transmit data over Thread, it's not high bandwidth enough. No where in the linked post, though, or in the source press release does it mention that Wi-Fi is optional, but other more informed users here have said that it is optional, and only necessary for high bandwidth stuff like cameras, so lightswitches could be Thread only. So some devices apparently won't have it. But many will.

Reading the actual CSA press release, it says

> Wi-Fi enables Matter devices to interact over a high-bandwidth local network and allows smart home devices to communicate with the cloud.

So yes. The goal for the Wi-Fi is both to transmit high bandwidth stuff like camera feeds over local network, but also to allow "smart devices to communicate with the cloud" aka "reach the internet". So yes, the devices _will_ have WiFi.

You should read it more carefully.

Thread and Zigbee are entirely distinct protocols; Matter does not use Zigbee in any way, at any layer of the stack, with the exception of some influence on the high-layer device/data modeling

Doesn't Z-Wave require a fairly proprietary implementation, that is also having the side effect of propping up the price?

Yes, Z-Wave as as protocol is basically synonymous with a Silicon Labs product line, to the degree that the different versions of the Z-wave standard are more often referred to by their Silicon Labs part numbers (500 series, 700 series). This does seem to hold up the price of Z-wave products but, to be fair, they end up still being pretty competitive with a lot of other options, although usually more expensive than the most cost-optimized WiFi products like Tuya devices.

And at least for a long time held back the quality of open source solutions. There was (is?) frustration in the developer community in not having access to the Zwave spec and documentation.

Agreed, as far as I could tell the thread border router is designed to be opaque to traffic traversing it.

I have a huge issue with this. The fact that zwave/zigbee cannot connect to the internet is why I have so many in my home and I'm not as concerned about them.

I think I remember looking at the vendors that were involved in Thread and none were privacy conscious. Apple, Google, Amazon, major Semiconductor manufacturers, Samsung, Yale. No-one who actually promotes privacy in standards.

I'm gonna guess Thread will be a privacy nightmare with the internet access making it no better than wifi. Lame.

I am so afraid of the potential of a cyber attack via IoT... with people taking image files from random spots on the dark web and writing them to their rasp pi's without looking at what's on the image, and putting random devices on their network without having any way to explore the code embedded -- it would be very easy for a widescale cyber attack to suddenly be unleashed and very suddenly we wouldn't even know what hit us.

Does it? This is a pretty big departure from Zigbee, why would they do this? It's very much an antifeature.

Please someone tell me if I'm wrong but from reading the wiki [0] everything in there screams "this has full access to the internet".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thread_(network_protocol)

Hm, yeah, it does say "cloud access". I hope they mean just the hub has access, and the devices don't rely on it.

Thread devices cannot access the internet without the cooperation of a gateway device. The topology is ultimately the same as Z-Wave with the devices communicating with a hub and the hub communicating with the internet. Thread is based on IEEE 802.15.4 just like Zigbee, but it uses IPv6 with extensions as the network protocol, for both a more powerful and flexible network protocol and more implementation commonality with existing network stacks.

That said, an explicit goal of Thread is to make the implementation of the gateway device easier and thus allow devices to communicate with a backing cloud service with less active participation of the hub... the hub is still "in the loop," but it doesn't need application-specific implementation for every device, it can just forward messages.

I haven't tested, but I'd hope HomePods acting as gateways would be able to toggle internet access. Apple made a whole thing about HomeKit wifi routers (there's like 1 on the market) where you can easily firewall any wifi homekit devices to within your network.

Enthusiast solution would be to use Home Assistant as your thread gateway to actually be in control of the connections:

https://community.home-assistant.io/t/home-assistant-skyconn...

For reference, the only HomeKit router listed on Apple's website is the "Linksys Velop AX4200 Mesh WiFi 6 System, Tri-Band"

https://www.apple.com/home-app/accessories/#section-routers

The last few Eero mesh routers have also supported HomeKit. That’s what I use.

From the Matter Spec:

> 2.3. Network Topology

> [...]

> This protocol may operate in the absence of globally routable IPv6 infrastructure. This requirement enables operation in a network disconnected or firewalled from the global Internet.

Key word there is MAY, not shall...

May implies it is up to the manufacture is internet (i.e globally routable IPv6 infrastructure) if required or not.

In the next sentence it says "requirement".

Confusingly, in legal terms "may" can also indicate a mandatory provision, depending on the context. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/may

Note, you can always set up a Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) as a VLAN for your IOT stuff, and then use a proxy in case you need those to reach some servers outside. It is not a solution for always-on-internet devices, but for stuff like Shellies it works fine.

It's a real shame that home networking equipment don't have better firewalls or VLAN capabilities.

With a simple (open,pf)sense firewall, ubiquity AP you can easily configure a WiFi network that is completely internal and can talk to each other, but not to anyone else.

After reading /r/sysadmin for years I have zero faith in the average user's ability to use such a device. The closest thing I have ever seen was some D-Link router that had the option for a DMZ

Of course, but I'd also argue that smart home appliances are mainly for those with some technical knowledge, especially configuring them to work together. It's actually no linger uncommon to find networking gear with these features, only that most people just use what their ISP gives them.

It's a matter of defaults - isp provided firewall/routers these days commonly come with a guest WiFi mode, and good ones even segregate that network. I can envision an iot mode that would a large minority of users could use. There's always going to be users who don't care, or don't have the technical knowledge, but recognise that stories on /r/sysadmin skew away from the "average user".

It isn’t exactly home networking, but Ubiquiti’s stuff has good VLAN and firewall capabilities.

That does not really resolve the problem for cloud encumbered devices

Sure I can block them from the internet but if their management requires a cloud server (which many do) then they are bricks

In Germany, Fritz!Box actually managed to have advanced capabilities like that and still become mainstream. Many people use Fritz!Box routers here, and ISPs often offer them for free with higher contracts. I don’t have one, but my parents do and while I can probably do a bit more with my Ubiquity devices, it’s not that much more and the Fritxbox has a far superior user interface in exchange.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz!Box

Isn't Thread 6LoWPAN? This should normally require a Thread to WiFi hardware gateway with a IPv4 to IPv4 gateway. I'm sure it also uses private address space.

Is it access to the internet, or access to the internet through a gateway (other than the primary router)? That's a big difference.

there's no way to turn it off or block it on a vlan?

"it gives each device access to the internet". I'm sure it's for your own good! I imagine the Matter SIG/Alliance is a who's who of data muncher and fetishists.

Let's wait and see what this thing really looks like.

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