this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2025
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but it is a fault of WiFi as a choice for that application. Just because it does wireless communication doesn't mean it's suited for any application that needs a wireless protocol. Using it for very-low traffic applications is simply not what it was designed to do, and it has significant negative effects if you do. Any device you add basically slows down any other device by a bit. And wifi network you add in a physical area decreases the effectiveness of all other wifi networks in it's vicinity. In even medium densly populated areas, wifi is already borderline unusable due to congestion. Your proposed (dedicated) hub is a good idea for network isolation, assuming it's designed and configured correctly, but that also comes with more and frankly just as bad security implications, just different ones. To be clear, having like a light bulb or two wifi is a fine choice. For 50 or a whole smart home network, it no longer is.
Both Zigbee and Matter do not rely on cloud connectivity as a protocol, though many of the manufacturers implementations do effectly add that on top: you get the exact solution you propose here as well. At least with these standards you can control everyhing locally, if you want to, and you don't congest the spectrum nearly as much as wifi does.
Was it not? Sure, it wasn't specifically designed for low traffic, but it was designed with a wide range of traffic levels in mind; after all, virtually every WiFi capable device, home automation or not, uses very little traffic most of the time as it idles. Now, I absolutely appreciate Zigbee or ZWave being optimized for minimal energy consumption, which is useful for some device types; but I feel it isn't right to call WiFi a poor choice for low traffic just because it also handles very high traffic well.
You raise an interesting point about congestion, though, and that is very much was I hoped to learn about. I am sometimes under impression that device designers assume everyone lives in a detached house so interference can be ignored. Do you know how specifically is Zigbee better in this regard? Living in a condominium I always had very poor experience with Zigbee reliability, which might or might not have been due to local radio noise at various ares of the spectrum, so I'm curious to learn about details how exactly these purpose-specific transfer layers deal with noisy neighborhoods.
ZigBee devices form a mesh network, which WiFi devices don't do. This means I can have my hub on one side of my house and a bunch of bulbs and smart outlets maintain a backbone through the house for a bunch of low power devices (like thermostats and door sensors) to connect to it.
If you're having a bad ZigBee experience, I recommend making sure your bulbs can serve as a general ZigBee bridge, and not just a bridge for other bulbs of that brand. Otherwise, a well placed smart outlet can serve the same purpose.
And that's a great example of how Zigbee design principles are fundamentally better suited for home automation purposes than WiFi. Thank you.
In my ideal world, no devices would not rely on cloud connectivity ever, regardless of their choice wireless transport layer. The fact that the nature of Zigbee or Thread stop device manufacturers from stupid practices (such as relying on direct WAN access) is nice, sure, but does being less capable really make them better suited for the job? I would prefer to appreciate Zigbee or Thread for what they are and have, rather than by the fortunate side effects of what they can't do.
I also don't want devices I'm actively using to needlessly compete with random logistical packets from a dozens of devices around my house. I also don't want the devices themselves to need all the power of a WiFi connection when another protocol suited to low power home automation devices is sufficient.
ZigBee/zwave were fine for me, though. I personally haven't seen a clear benefit to matter+thread yet.
My favourite thing about these non-wifi wireless protocols is that devices using them seem to want cloud connectivity a lot less than those that come with wifi.
What do you have in mind? Surely, no solution is perfect, but at least on the surface it sounds much better than the alternative of no isolation at all, so I'd love to learn what worries you.