Thread’s 2024 Enhancements and What They’ll Mean to You
By Thread Group
Whether it's for a smart home or a smart building, people want to choose the devices and platforms that are best for them and have confidence they’ll work together. That’s why the new era of the smart home is an open, interoperable one.
It’s also why the Thread Group’s 2024 roadmap includes six new features and enhancements to enable developers and product makers to build for this new era.
Informed by Thread Group members’ real-world challenges and experience, these new features will make Thread devices more interoperable, reliable, and flexible for the many different ways businesses, developers, and users build their connected experiences.
The features and enhancements include:
- Credential sharing
- More ubiquitous Internet connectivity
- Thread over Infrastructure
- Network diagnostics
- Secure Commissioning at scale
- Numerous additional enhancements to robustness and scalability
To bring these benefits to market quickly, Thread Group members are encouraged to access the new specifications and implementation content for their integration efforts now. Details related to testing and certification are underway and should be finalized soon.
What Thread’s Enhancements Will Mean for Developers, Installers and End Users
Product managers and developers of smart home and commercial building devices who use Thread at the network layer will have more opportunities to innovate, less overhead, and can offer better customer support — all of which can ultimately deliver richer end user experiences and boost brand loyalty.
Professional installers can improve their profitability and productivity, as these enhancements can ease the installation process, provide more troubleshooting capabilities, and reduce on-site time and support requests.
As a result, end users of these Thread devices will benefit from a more robust, scalable, and secure smart home experience.
Credential Sharing
Thread is standardizing the way Thread Border Routers and devices from different vendors can share credentials with each other. As smart home platforms, mobile OS, and app developers integrate credential sharing, it will be easier to add a new Thread Border Router or Thread device to an existing Thread network. The result will be a single, larger-ranging Thread mesh network, including multiple Border Routers, which in turn can increase the reliability of all the devices in it.
More Ubiquitous Internet Connectivity
With this enhancement, Thread networks will require Thread Border Routers to provide a standardized path to the Internet for the devices connected to it. This assurance of connectivity means product makers can build devices that leverage the cloud for more dynamic features (like a thermostat that responds to weather changes) or give users the ability to remotely control their devices. They can also send software updates to the devices and perform diagnostics to provide better technical support.
Thread Over Infrastructure
Thread can be a great technology for devices at the edge of networks — providing greater range and battery life to devices in and outside of buildings. With Thread over Infrastructure enhancements, Thread Border Routers connected to each other only over existing infrastructure like Wi-Fi or Ethernet can leverage those connections as additional paths in the Thread network. By reusing these links, users can experience greater range, reliability, and robustness, with less complexity.
Network Diagnostics
Newly standardized methods for Thread devices to provide network configuration and status data will enable product developers and installers more visibility into Thread networks. This can make device testing and network troubleshooting easier and reduce support costs. The resulting opportunities range from delivering more robust network performance to end users, providing installers more insight into the network and advanced troubleshooting features, to building commercial-grade network monitoring and diagnostic tools.
Secure Commissioning at Scale
Developed to address the needs of professional installation and commercial building scenarios, commissioning at scale makes it easy to wirelessly onboard Thread devices that are pre-installed in difficult-to-reach places, such as inside a ceiling or embedded in a wall. Instead of scanning physical install codes once installed devices are powered, Thread commissioning can be implemented over authenticated TLS (Transport Layer Security) by exchanging security certificates This authenticated commissioning can be performed while in proximity using a mobile device (phone, tablet) over a wireless connection such as a Bluetooth Low Energy radio.
New Enhancements
There are also maintenance updates being made to enable more robust operation and performance across Thread mesh networks. Overall, these new features will enhance the deployment and performance of Thread-enabled devices and networks, as well as the experiences people have using them.
These features and enhancements are currently being developed and deployed by member companies of the Thread Group. Members can learn more and start working with these updates via the member portal.
Thread members come together to bring their expertise, in-market experience, and needs, to continue making Thread the best wireless technology for IoT and Smart Home devices. Learn more about how to join and contribute at threadgroup.org
Product developers can also visit the open-source Thread community to learn more about these enhancements Thread Group’s developer resources site. The Thread Group will post more details and specifics as these enhancements are released publicly to its website.