Meet Zigbee.
Zigbee isn't a cartoon character — it's the standard powering your smart home devices.
Unlike Wi-Fi, which serves as the primary communication standard for most of your devices, Zigbee is an entirely different communication standard.
Zigbee's key characteristics are:
- **Low power consumption**, which allows it to run even on very small devices.
- **Mesh communication** — all devices operating on Zigbee within the same network can communicate directly with one another, potentially eliminating the need for a central router.
- **Zigbee is considered a secure standard**, as it uses symmetric encryption. Moreover, the fact that it is a different communication standard from Wi-Fi means that cyberattacks targeting classic internet infrastructure (based on 802.11 — the standard underlying the internet as we know it) are not applicable to Zigbee infrastructure.
The latest routers I purchased have 7 antennas.
Six of them handle Wi-Fi data transmission. The seventh is dedicated to Zigbee-based smart home devices.
The reason we can control our robotic vacuum cleaner from an app is that the communication runs through a smart home hub.
The hub's role is to act as a translator between protocols. The commands we send through the app are transmitted using the standard 802.11 internet protocol. The hub translates those commands into Zigbee and forwards them to the relevant device.
If you've ever wondered why you need to buy a hub to manage your smart home optimally — now you have your answer.