While it has taken longer than some people expected, Matter is finally going mainstream. Brands including Ikea, Kwikset, and Bosch have shipped matter devices, and matter hubs can increasingly be found in people’s homes.
Great article. Appreciate the detail on current level of NAT64 support. I assume that if using Matter-over-WiFi this challenge largely disappears—still could use CoAP/DTLS but the Layer 3 part is greatly simplified.
The most challenging thing about designing for Matter right now in my mind is exactly these uncertainties around practical communications in the field: if developing on Thread there’s this question of whether global routable addresses or NAT64 are available (and it would be nice to have some statistics on this availability), but even for Matter-over-WiFi it’s unclear to what extent other controllers can participate in the fabric for device-to-device communication, and whether this varies by coordinator in use. Reading the docs only goes so far, that’s why we have Interrupt :).
I assume that if using Matter-over-WiFi this challenge largely disappears
That’s right, and I suspect it’s a big driver of OEMs choosing WiFi even for low bandwidth applications.
The most challenging thing about designing for Matter right now in my mind is exactly these uncertainties around practical communications in the field: if developing on Thread there’s this question of whether global routable addresses or NAT64 are available (and it would be nice to have some statistics on this availability)
Completely agree, I wish the CSA would publish test / compliance reports for certified gateways that include this information. Best we have today (AFAIK) is checking for Thread 1.4 support. Many thread 1.3 devices support it, but 1.4 makes it a requirement.
For globally routable addresses it’s even more of a crapshoot: it depends not just on the border router, but on the home networking equipment.