Comment by dare944
2 days ago
Thread is an IPv6 network stack. So if you're using Matter over Thread, you're using TCP/IP (or more specifically, UDP over IP).
TCP/IP and its associated network and transport protocols are not going to be outdated in our lifetimes.
Thanks for the correction. My main point was that Matter over a normal Ethernet network is imho a different animal than Matter over Thread.
Not that I've yet found any decent devices that don't cost a fortune that do anything with Thread, other than apparently a half dozen things I own are Thread Border Routers (hubs). I have all these hubs and nothing for them to speak to.
Matter over ethernet, as designed, should work exactly like matter over wifi and matter over thread. The only exception is the Bluetooth LE pairing component, the rest is a mix of IPv6, mDNS, and other pretty much standard protocols for networking and discovery.
Matter and Thread seem to be progressing rather slowly when it comes to hardware support. Zigbee seems to be the reigning champion still, though slowly companies seem to be moving towards Matter now.
The super cheap AliExpress stuff will probably take years to move on. Matter is a western standard backed by western big tech, so unless you're mostly targeting the west you may as well stick to Zigbee for a while.
The biggest advantage to Thread over Zigbee is probably that phones have Thread radios (iPhones and some Androids) so you can directly control light bulbs and such without any gateways or firewalls to care about. Now that esp32s are also gaining Thread support, things should start accelerating in a few product cycles.
> Matter over ethernet, as designed, should work exactly like matter over wifi and matter over thread.
Sorry, I've again failed to explain properly.
My main point: I dislike smarthome things where the individual endpoints are wi-fi, especially small things like switches and lights, because it means there has to be some usually cheesy way to pair it to the network (and also because I don't have Ubiquiti or anything so I don't have a separate IoT network, so it would clutter up my LAN and annoy me). I like Zigbee (and I suppose Zwave is cool, but don't personally have it) and will probably like Thread someday because they don't require me to get my network credentials into a lightbulb in the first place, which if I know manufacturers, will in practice mean some horrible iOS app is mandatory and that app's eventual retirement will someday brick the device.
For that reason, I am rooting for Thread to hurry up and actually make an impact on the market, and not really interested in Matter-over-Wi-fi because in that sense, moving from Zigbee (or Caseta, my other major thing) to Matter-over-Wi-fi would be a big step backward in that way.