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The Connectivity Standards Alliance Announces Zigbee 4.0 and Suzi

csa-iot.org

41–50 of 87 posts

Re: The Connectivity Standards Alliance Announces Zigbee 4.0 and Suzi

#41
post #29

Any particular advantage to Suzi over Thread? Why didn't they adopt an IP based standard that is interoperable with ... all major networks since ~1995 (if not before)?

Multiple reasons like not enough v4 IPs, devices being able to sleep most of the time to conserve power, security cameras and IoT devices getting hacked and faling prey to by botnet operators etc.

> not enough v4 IPs

No one is giving their IoT devices public IPv4 addresses. They would be behind a NAT. RFC 1918 provides 17,891,322 usable IP addresses for each private network. If we want to be a little more adventurous, RFC 6598 provides an additional 4,194,302 usable addresses and 240.0.0.0/4 is another 268,435,454 usable addresses "reserved for future use" since 1989, but still sitting unused so we can use them as internal addresses inside a NAT anyway (for example, AWS uses this range internally).

Show me a network that is using all 290,521,078 addresses and I'll show you a network managed by a team of network engineers who can just set up IPv6.

Re: The Connectivity Standards Alliance Announces Zigbee 4.0 and Suzi

#42
post #20
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh cool it's not just me doing exactly this. Sticking to pure zigbee devices with zigbee2mqtt and slae.sh's excellent USB coordinator. A couple weeks ago I bought a bunch of spare IKEA zigbee devices before they go out of stock. Around 2030 I'll take a look if thread/matter is anywhere near mature and has settled.

Side question but where would one learn how to do this that way? Any guides, reddit? The home automation market seems such a mess every time I check it out.

Easiest way is to put HAOS (Home Assistant OS) on a Raspberry Pi, Home Assistant Green, or some NUC:

https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/

Then get a coordinator recommended for zigbee2mqtt:

https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/guide/adapters/

Then install and start the following add-ons in Home Assistant:

- Mosquitto - zigbee2mqtt: https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/guide/installation/03_ha_addon.ht... - MQTT

And that's pretty much it, you can add devices through the MQTT add-on page. They will also become available as entities in the rest of Home Assistant, and you can make graphs, dashboards, actions, etc.

You can also run + install zigbee2mqtt and Mosquitto on a Linux machine, but HAOS give you more of an integrated solution with dashboards, graphs, backups, cloud access, etc.

Re: The Connectivity Standards Alliance Announces Zigbee 4.0 and Suzi

#43
post #24
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Matter" can in practice also mean "Matter over Wi-Fi", and lots of vendors use it that way.

That’s my issue with it: iot devices shouldn’t have access to the internet by default. With Matter it’s possible. No one is going to create outbound firewall rules for these things.

I think it's only a matter of time before it's the same for Thread + Matter. Currently they get an ULA IPv6 address on (most?) border routers and you can ping the devices on the local network. It will be too attractive extend the standard to permit phoning home for 'analytics to improve the product' (I don't think this is possible yet with the current standard? But hard to tell.).

Re: The Connectivity Standards Alliance Announces Zigbee 4.0 and Suzi

#44
post #29

Any particular advantage to Suzi over Thread? Why didn't they adopt an IP based standard that is interoperable with ... all major networks since ~1995 (if not before)?

Multiple reasons like not enough v4 IPs, devices being able to sleep most of the time to conserve power, security cameras and IoT devices getting hacked and faling prey to by botnet operators etc.

Thread uses IPv6.

Re: The Connectivity Standards Alliance Announces Zigbee 4.0 and Suzi

#45
post #7
post #2

I thought Threads was already the next generation of zigbee.

I hope Zigbee stays. It’s widely used and works really well. Matter may be even better but it also makes it really hard for manufacturers to actually make products that can be sold cheaply. Zigbee is just good enough and I believe the push to replace it has ulterior motives.

Zigbee is indeed good enough. The issue is that it solves the problem well enough and doesn't allow for maximizing how much customers are milked for. So customers will always choose Zigbee over any other option that also solves the problem plus some useless features, less control, and increased security surface area.

There is a very clear signal that is easy to pick up: either you support zigbee in your IoT device or you are trying to undermine the customer. No customer wants to be undermined. This should make Zigbee support a very easy choice for companies operating in a competitive space. Simply succeeding in the market should be enough and if it isn't that is the company's existential challenge.

Re: The Connectivity Standards Alliance Announces Zigbee 4.0 and Suzi

#46
post #5
post #2

I thought Threads was already the next generation of zigbee.

The good thing is that at least for a somewhat technical crowd, there is absolutely no need to buy into any of this, as there have been proper solutions available since at least 2018. Just buy Hue, maybe Aqara sensors, use zigbee2mqtt with Home Assistant and be happy while observing the shitshow that is this market from a safe distance.

> Just buy Hue, maybe Aqara sensors, use zigbee2mqtt with Home Assistant and be happy while observing the shitshow that is this market from a safe distance.

The only worry is if manufacturers stop developing Zigbee products. Ikea for example made cheap and good Zigbee devices but they've said they're moving away from Zigbee.

Re: The Connectivity Standards Alliance Announces Zigbee 4.0 and Suzi

#47
post #35

So this will compete with Z-wave, that already operate in the 800-900 MHz space? It's very confusing with a new Zigbee standard when I thought it was being replaced with Thread

It's very confusing with a new Zigbee standard when I thought it was being replaced with Thread And from the same organization that co-designed and promotes Matter. Personally, I'm very happy that Zigbee continues to be developed. I am not very enthusiastic about everything being IP addressable (even if it is just ULA) and the convoluted Thread flow where a bunch of border routers require you to initiate the pairing…

As someone who's run (and continues to run) both ZWave and Zigbee networks for over 10 years I find the direction of Zigbee rather frustrating. They used to be the antithesis of Zwave with it's frustrating "licensing" and now seems to be as though they're towing that line. Most likely because they got in bed with Google, Apple and the garbage that is Matter.

Re: The Connectivity Standards Alliance Announces Zigbee 4.0 and Suzi

#48
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multiple reasons like not enough v4 IPs, devices being able to sleep most of the time to conserve power, security cameras and IoT devices getting hacked and faling prey to by botnet operators etc.

> not enough v4 IPs No one is giving their IoT devices public IPv4 addresses. They would be behind a NAT. RFC 1918 provides 17,891,322 usable IP addresses for each private network. If we want to be a little more adventurous, RFC 6598 provides an additional 4,194,302 usable addresses and 240.0.0.0/4 is another 268,435,454 usable addresses "reserved for future use" since 1989, but still sitting unused so we can use the…

You still have to manage those and assign them through DHCP every time the device wakes up and turns the radio on. Maybe WiFi 7 will address that with the low power mode? Also, I don't want a 100 sensor mesh network on my LAN. That's why Thread uses a IPv6 6LoWPAN. One should use that if they want to bridge to IP.

Re: The Connectivity Standards Alliance Announces Zigbee 4.0 and Suzi

#49
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multiple reasons like not enough v4 IPs, devices being able to sleep most of the time to conserve power, security cameras and IoT devices getting hacked and faling prey to by botnet operators etc.

Thread uses IPv6.

Exactly, over over IEEE 802.15.4. Easy to bridge to IP using the appropriate border router or whatever they are called.

Re: The Connectivity Standards Alliance Announces Zigbee 4.0 and Suzi

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very confusing with a new Zigbee standard when I thought it was being replaced with Thread And from the same organization that co-designed and promotes Matter. Personally, I'm very happy that Zigbee continues to be developed. I am not very enthusiastic about everything being IP addressable (even if it is just ULA) and the convoluted Thread flow where a bunch of border routers require you to initiate the pairing…

As someone who's run (and continues to run) both ZWave and Zigbee networks for over 10 years I find the direction of Zigbee rather frustrating. They used to be the antithesis of Zwave with it's frustrating "licensing" and now seems to be as though they're towing that line. Most likely because they got in bed with Google, Apple and the garbage that is Matter.

What’s wrong with Matter?
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