Meshing Your Home Networks

The Connected Home—you hear about it everywhere, see it every time you go to your local DIY store (think Home Depot’s or Lowe’s), and it’s all the rage in the blogosphere. But how do all of those devices fit into the home network you have today? How do they talk to each other, and to you? Will you eventually need an enormous Wi-Fi hotspot or multiples scattered through-out your home?

We’re all used to Wi-Fi. We know that when it acts up we have to reboot the modem; we know how to connect our laptops and TV sets to our Wi-Fi network. It’s well-trodden territory. However, the bandwidth per device decreases as more devices are added, all of the devices must be in range of the router and it requires a lot of power from the devices to which it connects. In the Connected Home, Wi-Fi networks move big data sets between our home and the Cloud (via our ISP). Streaming video, gaming, IP cameras, tablets, PCs and smartphones are examples of applications and devices that use Wi-Fi. If you used Wi-Fi for every connected device you would have an energy-hungry, bandwidth-constrained connected home.

Bluetooth Smart is low-power, has a low data rate and can operate on batteries, and it plays a major role in how we manage and communicate with our Connected Home. Bluetooth Smart acts as a point to point network and allows us to bring a new device into the network or control a single device via an app on our smartphone.

Thankfully, there are lower power wireless protocols like ZigBee and the IPv6 enabled Thread that are optimized for large networks, lower data rates and battery operation.

To access and control the myriad small devices across the Connected Home (light bulbs, sensors, door/window locks, appliances, thermostats) mesh networking that extends the network by passing messages between devices is the most robust and scalable technology. The most common mesh protocols are ZigBee and the IPv6-enabled Thread and are on based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard.

Both protocols connect all those little devices together into a mesh that can scale to hundreds of devices, provide very reliable data transmission and heal itself. When one device (or node) stops working, the whole network doesn’t break. Rather, it self-corrects, and the rest of the devices in the Connected Home keep the lights on, the doors locked and the A/C running. And, unlike Wi-Fi, a mesh network’s range improves as you increase the number of devices in your home and will even continue to operate if you lose your connection to your ISP.

If you’re wondering how ZigBee, Thread, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Smart all cooperate to make a harmonious Connected Home experience, take a look at this infographic. The high data rate devices are connected to Wi-Fi, the multitude of low data rate devices are connected to ZigBee or Thread and, Bluetooth Smart provides the interface to the networks from your mobile device.