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Zigbee vs. Matter over Thread:Understanding IoT Protocol Performance in Practice

arxiv.org

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Re: Zigbee vs. Matter over Thread:Understanding IoT Protocol Performance in Practice

#51

Post by denkmoon »

richwater wrote: post #10
jauntywundrkind wrote: post #3

A lot of graphs where OpenThread & zigbee dance around each other, are within 2x of each other. Two huge notables to me: message throughput for openthreads scales up, zigbee seems to hit a wall early. Not sure when that matters but very clear. The last table was a fright through: it takes half a minute for OpenThreads to recover after a node drops where-as Zigbee a quarter second! Wow.

Is there a situation in which your smarthome taking 30s to recover from a node failure is impacting your life? Seems like a distinction without a difference

Do you have any smarthome stuff? Standing around waiting 30 seconds for your light to come on would be moronic. A complete regression over the electric switch invented in 1884. I'd rip everything out right then and there. Your home should be reliable, smart or no.

Re: Zigbee vs. Matter over Thread:Understanding IoT Protocol Performance in Practice

#52

Post by waste_monk »

SEJeff wrote: post #4

I’m a bit surprised they didn’t add zwave into this comparison.

I'd like to use z-wave but as an Australian we have different allowed frequency bands (specifically the USA-market gear uses frequencies that are reserved for telecom use over here, and anything that can interfere with the ability to call emergency services is Very Illegal), and thus the few devices that get built supporting the AU rf bands are overly expensive due to the (lack of) economy of scale.

As a result my home automation stack is a mix of zigbee, Matter (over both Wifi and Thread), and just plain WiFi. All of which uses the 2.4Ghz (and 5Ghz but mostly 2.4 for the IoT stuff) ISM band(s) and is thus cheap and plentiful.

Not sure how many other regions suffer the same issues, but I suspect that z-wave will be outcompeted by the more modern alternatives in the coming years.

/rant

Re: Zigbee vs. Matter over Thread:Understanding IoT Protocol Performance in Practice

#53

Post by tehlike »

unsnap_biceps wrote: post #22
asveikau wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't zwave use a different frequency, and zigbee and thread are both 2.4ghz? Perhaps that makes it a more fair comparison?

some zigbee controllers even support being converted to thread via a firmware update

smlights do that! they are great.

Re: Zigbee vs. Matter over Thread:Understanding IoT Protocol Performance in Practice

#55

Post by wao0uuno »

torginus wrote: post #48
wao0uuno wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My entire “smart” home setup is built with Matter over Thread. It’s fully local. No internet access required. With Home Assistant onboarding can be done without a smartphone now. Devices without official certification work but probably only in Home Assistant.

Dunno, personally I have found HA + MoT to be strictly worse than Z2M. It's the classic case of the Douglas Adams quote: “The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair." HA MoT has a simplified UI, that hides hellish complexity underneath, that's…

I never had any problems with Thread that couldn’t be fixed by pulling batteries from a crashed Ikea device and I have very little interest in how the protocol works.

Automatic updates in Home Assistant are disabled by default for a reason. It’s not an ultra polished, safe corporate environment for non technical wives and children.

Which sensor? Battery powered temp/humidity sensor or USB-C powered air quality monitor? I’m asking because the battery powered one is known to be bad. They disconnect and refuse to connect again until their batteries are pulled for ~10 seconds. It’s a device problem, not Thread problem.

Re: Zigbee vs. Matter over Thread:Understanding IoT Protocol Performance in Practice

#56

Post by cpressland »

I’m in the process of migrating from Zigbee (Z2M) to Matter over Thread (Apple HomePods + Matter Server).

My Zigbee network was a mishmash of different vendors all of which had their own failure rates and quirks, Aqara having by far the highest failure rate and complexity.

My new Ikea (Thread) based setup has had absolutely zero issues so far and fingers crossed it doesn’t start suffering as I scale it out. That said, it is noticeably slower than Zigbee, but we’re talking 50ms > 250ms. Which is more than acceptable.

Re: Zigbee vs. Matter over Thread:Understanding IoT Protocol Performance in Practice

#57

Post by tetris11 »

cpressland wrote: post #56

I’m in the process of migrating from Zigbee (Z2M) to Matter over Thread (Apple HomePods + Matter Server). My Zigbee network was a mishmash of different vendors all of which had their own failure rates and quirks, Aqara having by far the highest failure rate and complexity. My new Ikea (Thread) based setup has had absolutely zero issues so far and fingers crossed it doesn’t start suffering as I scale it out. That said…

What's to stop Ikea from pushing an OTA and crippling your whole setup 2 years from now?

Re: Zigbee vs. Matter over Thread:Understanding IoT Protocol Performance in Practice

#58

Post by XiS »

`establishing it as a more robust foundation for larger and more heterogeneous deployments.`

Based on.... 6 devices?

Quite honestly I would have been interested in measurements with more than only 6 devices. Maybe upto 50 or so,even better if they'd mixed different hardware nodes for a more realistic scenario

Re: Zigbee vs. Matter over Thread:Understanding IoT Protocol Performance in Practice

#59

Post by HerAnt »

tetris11 wrote: post #57
cpressland wrote: post #56

I’m in the process of migrating from Zigbee (Z2M) to Matter over Thread (Apple HomePods + Matter Server). My Zigbee network was a mishmash of different vendors all of which had their own failure rates and quirks, Aqara having by far the highest failure rate and complexity. My new Ikea (Thread) based setup has had absolutely zero issues so far and fingers crossed it doesn’t start suffering as I scale it out. That said…

What's to stop Ikea from pushing an OTA and crippling your whole setup 2 years from now?

You don't need to update your devices, and they don't need to be connected to any cloud. That's the whole point of these local communication protocols, after all.

Re: Zigbee vs. Matter over Thread:Understanding IoT Protocol Performance in Practice

#60

Post by iamacyborg »

wao0uuno wrote: post #47
iamacyborg wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Matter over Thread stuff keeps occasionally falling over in Home Assistant and becoming unavailable, probably a router issue as I’m using a homepod mini but still endlessly frustrating.

I’m using ZBT-2 with HAOS on RPi 4 4GB. It’s rock solid in a crowded apartment complex. Devices are 90% IKEA and 10% Aqara. Definitely try that antenna and don’t connect additional border routers. Let HA own everything.

My whole setup is, suboptimal, to put it delicately. It’s just running on a NUC that’s crammed inside my AV cabinet, antennas would be crammed in there as well. I mostly buy zigbee stuff but it’s hard to ignore how cheap the Ikea Matter over Thread kit is.
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