ZigBee vs. IPv6

From On the Internet of Things

Something is bothering me. I keep hearing that ZigBee and 6LoWPANare competing technologies. The ZigBee Alliance has taken a stand to force such a confrontation. Its like comparing apples and, well, New York 

6LoWPAN = IPv6 = The Internet

Think about it. The Internet… the most successfull, innovative, massive network ever created.  Now what was that Zig thing called again? Does anyone even remember the proprietary, link-specific networking protocols from the 90s?

Here is why ZigBee is not competetive, and shouldn’t be compared to 6LoWPAN and IPv6:

1. ZigBee = small-scale isolated ad-hoc networking. 6LoWPAN = massively scalable networking as an end-to-end part of the Internet, it is IPv6!
2. ZigBee = limited to a single radio standard. 6LoWPAN = applicable to any low-power, low-rate wireless radio (or even wired! See Watteco). IP protocols tie together heterogeneous networks.
3. The only good part of ZigBee is application protocol profiles. And guess what, there is an IETF specification for using ZigBee profiles over UDP/IP. http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-tolle-cap-00.txt
4. ZigBee is not a standard, it is a special interest group. Will it be around in a few years? The IETF produces open, long-lived, standards. IPv6 will be around for 20+ years.
5. Large-scale enterprise automation, M2M, metering systems etc. require end-to-end addressing, security, mobility, traffic multiplexing, reusability, maintainability, and web-services which are globally scalable… this is the kind of thing IPv6 was designed for.

I only see one option for ZigBee, and that is to get properly networked. I bet soon we’ll be seeing something called ZigBee/IP 2010.

ZigBee over UDP/IPv6