Since matter is going to be out soon, I think google will probably enable the thread radio in the nest hub to make them boarder router. I own a few nest hub but only 2 of those are of the second generation. They are sitting at both end of the house and I beleive they will be too far appart to see each other.
If it is the case, for what I understand, there will be 2 independant thread network and end devices added to one won't see those attached to the other. Does that mean they will have to be controlled trough the cloud?
Furthermore, All my cloud stuff is on a separate network. Therefore, assuming those are my only boarder routers, does it means my thread network wont be local (I mean accessing it from my separate internal network) ?
Also, If I install a boarder router on my local network, it will see the nest hub as thread devices and form a mesh with them but they will be connected to 2 different network. What will happen then?
So, as I understand it, Thread basically marries ZigBee and IPv6. That’s on the network connectivity layer. Matter rides on top of the network layer, and provides the API that devices will use to talk to one another.
Think of thread like the phone, and Matter like the language each caller is using to speak to one another.
So, in your scenario - again as I understand it - you can have multiple Thread networks, just like you can have multiple Wi-Fi networks. They can’t speak to each other directly, but if they both use Matter - then you can unite the two networks via a Cloud service, just like Wi-Fi and Zigbee devices can work together with Alexa.
I know matter will do "magic" for us all but my questions are more related to thread innerworkings.
Being a Hubitat user, local control is very important to me.
For what I understand, in the presence of multiple router capable devices only one is elected as the boarder one. Since all this stuff is done automatically, I wont have any control of witch device get elected as the boarder router and I doubt google will offer an option to turn off the thread radio on their nest hub. Even if I install a boarder router capable thread device on my local network it does not mean that it will be the one choosen by the algorithm. So I have no garanty my thread devices will be completely local.
Your blue and red networks would have to be set up separately, if they connect anywhere in the Thread network they are on the same Thread network. Some documentation says that external routing can be disabled on specific routers. There's a fair amount on the details on the Thread Group website. Maybe this one helps? https://www.threadgroup.org/Portals/0/documents/support/BorderRouterWhitePaper_657_2.pdf
Thank you @bill.d for that document. At first glance it seems I made some wrong assumptions about how thread works. I'll look at it more closely to find out how it apply to my case.
Well... after reading about this, I did not get a definitive answer.
For what I understand, even though my google hubs are on a separate subnet they will join an eventual thread network automatically regardless of the subnet they belong to. Meaning any thread device I add will be able to access both subnet (through border routers). Since the google stuff only work if they have internet access, it would be impossible to isolate any thread device from acessing the internet.
This access is supposed to be software configurable but I doubt google will offer that kind of granular control on their device.
but my questions are more related to thread innerworkings.
