Anybody who has tried to set up any sort of non-trivial IoT network has run into this issue. It is very difficult to create a network which covers the entire house without relying on a plethora of gateways and routers, which significantly increases complexity and cost
I think a layer 3 switch supporting VLANs is enough. Bonus if the switch can provide power through PoE fore wire-connected devices.
You are correct, that would make setting up a network easier. And you can certainly do a lot of IoT work that way!
However, the point I was trying to make was more about interoperability - right now a lot of IoT protocols make it difficult to talk to the WWW, usually only the gateway can do that. This means that the gateway will likely need custom software that translates between web standards and its proprietary protocol. Thread simplifies things by natively supporting IPv6 routing right down to the end device.
There are also applications where connecting an Ethernet cable is impractical. However, these mostly pop up in industry. For instance, using IoT tags to determine the location of free range cattle, or any other application where a radio device has to move a lot.
Page doesn’t open without javascript enabled. Can’t imagine why it would be required for a blog post.
Flag the post as broken link. That’s what I regularly do with Medium.com links.
Thank you for your comment, I’ve flagged this up with our web developer :)
I’ve rehosted the post on GitHub in the meanwhile.
EDIT: It should work without JavaScript now!
I think a layer 3 switch supporting VLANs is enough. Bonus if the switch can provide power through PoE fore wire-connected devices.
You are correct, that would make setting up a network easier. And you can certainly do a lot of IoT work that way!
However, the point I was trying to make was more about interoperability - right now a lot of IoT protocols make it difficult to talk to the WWW, usually only the gateway can do that. This means that the gateway will likely need custom software that translates between web standards and its proprietary protocol. Thread simplifies things by natively supporting IPv6 routing right down to the end device.
There are also applications where connecting an Ethernet cable is impractical. However, these mostly pop up in industry. For instance, using IoT tags to determine the location of free range cattle, or any other application where a radio device has to move a lot.