What group sets standards for how devices work together across the Internet?

These days, we can take an ordinary inanimate object, such as a light bulb, and give it new high-tech capabilities by equipping it with a computer chip. As Smart home devices become increasingly popular, manufacturers are working to improve compatibility and set up. The lack of an industry standard made smart home set up more complex than it needed to be since different companies used various standards.

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Matter, the next-generation smart home standard, solves many smart home pain points while bringing all our IoT devices together. This article cover what Matter is, some challenges we still need to overcome, and why it's essential for our future smart homes.

What is the Matter smart home standard?

Matter is a new smart home standard conceived by Project Connected Home Over IP (Project Chip) in 2019. It's now maintained by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), formerly known as the Zigbee Alliance. The standard is royalty-free and encourages interoperability between devices and platforms.

The CSA brought many of the biggest smart home players on board with Matter, including Apple HomeKit, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Samsung SmartThings. Getting every company on the same page to support Matter is no small feat. However, it's a significant step toward a better smart home experience.

The Matter smart home standard also addresses another common pain point with current IoT devices: requiring a constant internet connection. IoT devices have previously relied exclusively on the cloud for everything, making them useless when you lose connection to the internet.

Matter allows your devices to work offline without requiring continuous access to the cloud. Less reliance on the cloud also means increased security for your devices, making Matter even more beneficial. The goal is to combine these new features to give you the best smart home experience possible.

Thread is the wireless protocol that complements Matter

Thread is another dedicated wireless protocol. It complements Matter-certified devices in a big way. As a low-powered mesh-based wireless protocol, Thread creates a low-latency offline environment that instantly sends and receives data across devices. As such, your Matter-certified devices continue working together even if you lose connection to the internet.

This is a giant leap forward for offline IoT computing. Smart homes of the past were rendered useless when internet service went out. Matter is about to change that for the better when combined with Thread.

Source: Thread Group

What was there before Matter and Thread? IoT devices have been around for years, yet they were separated into their own unique categories. There wasn't a universal standard to bring them together, which was one of the biggest hurdles we've had to overcome. Between Zigbee, Z-Wave, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi, the wireless connectivity space for smart home and IoT devices became too crowded for its own good.

Source: Pixabay

Also, most third-party smart home products use their own proprietary app during and after the initial setup process. And the more variety of device brands you had, the increased number of apps you were forced to juggle. This added plenty of unwanted stress to the user. The opposite of what a smart home should do.

A smart home is supposed to work seamlessly with your daily life, not against it. That extra baggage was enough to keep most early adopters from diving head-first into the smart home ecosystem.

Matter brings everything together seamlessly

The latest attempt to unify the smart home experience is through a unique protocol called Matter. However, this time is different. Matter uses a wireless technology based on Internet Protocol (IP), which Wi-Fi routers use to assign an IP address to each connected device. There are no awkward handoffs to deal with by natively integrating an IP-based protocol.

Adding the Thread wireless protocol into the mix can also achieve complete offline computing within your local mesh network of IoT devices. This paves the way for a future where your Matter-certified products work together in synchronous harmony.

Source: Pixabay

At the same time, multiple smart home wireless technologies caused a fragmentation problem over the years. But by getting some of the biggest smart home device makers to work together, we'll start seeing Matter-certified devices to solve that problem. Bringing our smart home products together is more complex than one might imagine. The ultimate goal is to create a "set-it-and-forget-it" ecosystem where our IoT devices fade into the background. And Matter is likely the answer we've been looking for to help bridge that gap to better our future smart homes.

Which companies support Matter?

Some of the biggest tech companies are working together to make Matter a unified protocol for future smart homes. These companies include Apple, Amazon, and Google. This means Apple HomeKit, Amazon Alexa, and Google Nest devices will work together seamlessly, to name a few.

The only way to unify this ecosystem is to get all the major players in the hardware business on the same page. And we're seeing a high early adoption rate of Matter among these companies, which is excellent news.

Source: Amazon

But what would an ecosystem of this scope be without all the third-party vendors? Many additional partners have announced that their Matter-certified products will be available to the public on day one. These companies include Belkin, GE Lighting, Philips Hue, and Comcast. With more partners and products coming soon.

Since Matter supports the open source movement, this encourages these device makers to work together even more because there are no steep royalties involved. As such, we can expect an increased demand for smart home device purchases soon after Matter officially launches.

What platforms will support Matter?

Apple HomeKit, Amazon Alexa, Google Nest, and Samsung SmartThings will support the Matter standard by default for all new devices. Those are a few quick examples, but some older products will require a Matter software update to be compatible. You'll eventually want to purchase new smart home devices with native support for Matter.

Although, there is good news for those who want to avoid buying more products right now: Matter is here to stay. This means you can slowly work on building out your smart home ecosystem with confidence as Matter continues to evolve.

There are a few exceptions to this new device purchase rule. Some older devices might support Matter with a software update. Amazon has confirmed that its Echo lineup will get a Matter update, and Google Nest home thermostats are doing the same. Your device manufacturer may notify you if it's eligible to receive a Matter update, so keep an eye on that in the coming months. If a device is relatively new, it has a higher chance of supporting the Matter standard. We don't see them being totally left behind.

When can we expect to see the first Matter devices?

This first generation of devices built for the Matter smart home standard should be on track to launch sometime in late 2022, assuming it doesn't face additional delays. More products were showcased in January 2022 at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), and many had a launch window sometime in 2022.

Some of your old devices may receive software updates to support Matter. Keep an eye on any news or notifications from the manufacturer of your products. However, the potential timeline for that ultimately depends on the device maker.

What are some challenges with the smart home and Wi-Fi?

Current smart home devices that connect over a Wi-Fi network are limited and held back by the technology from older generations of Wi-Fi. The fifth generation of Wi-Fi (Wi-Fi 5) is the most common version in the average consumer's home and has been widely available since 2014.

Because many wireless routers and devices from the past eight years were designed using Wi-Fi 5 for connectivity, this creates a unique problem for these newer IoT smart home products. Wi-Fi 5 wasn't built to accommodate the IoT devices of today, making our current smart home situation inconsistent.

However, starting with Wi-Fi 6, we finally have a Wi-Fi networking standard that caters to smart home IoT products. Wi-Fi 6 sends and receives data packets to more devices simultaneously, which means fewer wait times when a request is sent. Think of it as a multi-lane highway for your home network. Your wireless router can now handle more traffic with Wi-Fi 6. Wi-Fi 6 has been the most significant leap forward to the Wi-Fi wireless protocol in a long time, especially for the growing number of IoT devices in our homes.

What are the most common Wi-Fi protocols available today?

With all the talk about Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6, things will get more confusing for the average consumer going forward. We're just getting started. Wi-Fi 6E is also here to replace Wi-Fi 6, along with the eventual Wi-Fi 6 Release 2, as the next big thing. And for good measure, Wi-Fi 7 was talked about and showcased with new demo products at CES 2022. It's set to eventually replace Wi-Fi 6 entirely, which is still in the early days of consumer adoption. After all, technology marches forward at a rapid pace without hesitation.

Here's when modern Wi-Fi protocols were officially certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance:

• Wi-Fi 5 certification date: June 2013
• Wi-Fi 6 certification date: September 2019
• Wi-Fi 6E certification date: January 2021
• Wi-Fi 6 Release 2 certification date: January 2022
• Wi-Fi 7 certification date: Coming later in 2023

Getting a new wireless router for your smart home

Suppose you want to start building your smart home ecosystem and are currently in the market for a new wireless router. In that case, get Wi-Fi 6 at the minimum, as it's designed to handle IoT smart home devices. Although Wi-Fi 6 wireless routers have been out for a few years, it has taken them a while to become affordable for the average consumer. And with the recent arrival of Wi-Fi 6E, the newest extended version of the initial Wi-Fi 6 protocol, that price has dropped even more.

Source: Broadcom

You'll want Wi-Fi 6E to get the best features, but you'll pay a premium for the latest technology in most cases. Google is looking to bring Wi-Fi 6E to the masses with its Nest Wifi Pro, the successor to the older Nest Wifi and Google Wifi products. These devices have been popular as the go-to mesh home networking solution, and we think the Nest Wifi Pro can change the game again. Google's new focus on bringing Wi-Fi 6E into as many hands as possible means even better things for our future smart homes.

What are some security challenges with current Wi-Fi networks?

Another issue with many current IoT devices is how they can put our smart homes at risk from outside threats. Many wireless devices still utilize Wi-Fi 5, which launched with the WPA2 security protocol. WPA2 was introduced in 2004 but was made the mandatory security protocol for Wi-Fi starting in 2006.

Since then, we've relied on the same features to secure our wireless networks until Wi-Fi 6 came along. Today's focus on IoT and smart home devices means the time to move beyond the aging WPA 2 security protocol is right now.

Source: Pixabay

Wi-Fi 6 introduced the next-generation security protocol for wireless networking, known as WPA3. It brings some much-needed enhancements for IoT devices in the smart home, which is essential for keeping our data safe. WPA3 will benefit all supported products across your Wi-Fi network, not only the smart home devices.

Still, with more video doorbells and security cameras in and around our homes, you wouldn't want that kind of private information to get into the wrong hands. Thus, moving forward in wireless networking security goes hand in hand with the Matter smart home standard.

Your wireless router might support WPA3 security

If you have Google Wifi or Nest Wifi access points in your home, you can easily enable the WPA3 security protocol. Google released a software update to support WPA3 without forcing you to purchase any new hardware. This was a smart move on Google's part, as the Google Wifi and Nest Wifi products are highly-rated in the mesh networking market.

Regarding other wireless router device manufacturers, you may not get a free WPA3 software update. In this case, you'll need to purchase a new wireless router with Wi-Fi 6 support at the minimum to get WPA3 security.

Matter will help bring the future smart home experience to the present day

Solving the smart home challenges we face today is no easy task. It has taken a variety of tech partnerships from the biggest names in the industry and many new wireless protocols. However, we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. The next generation of IoT devices running under the Matter-certified brand looks to bring the future smart homes to the present day. With the expected initial public launch for Matter coming in late 2022, we'll finally be able to get our hands on the new products that support the standard.

Google Nest products have become a valuable asset since they're essential when building a smart home ecosystem. You can check out eight helpful Google Assistant commands for your Nest smart device to make them even more useful. Our guide covers everything you need to know, but there might be a few on this list that surprise you.

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