Communication

Typical Home Network

The home network is the center of all smart home operations. Starting off with the correct assumptions will help you design your framework properly.

Basic Components:

Internet Connection
Not required but useful for remote monitoring
Router/Firewall
Used for security and device communication
Wifi
Local Wireless connections
Ethernet
Local Wired connections
Servers
Virtual machines serving controls
Device Hubs
Clients
Computers for interfacing control panels
Devices

Smart (DUMB) Home Network - Cloud Based

The big box store "smart" home offerings are almost always a cloud based product.

This means that your internet needs to be connected 24/7 and if your internet goes down your home will be beyond your control. These products are closed source so you do not know who is watching or what they are doing with your information.

You might buy a doorbell that you can hear ring on your phone, see and talk to your visitor, but who else can too? You might buy a camera that you can watch your house remotely, but who else is watching too? That smart hub you bought to control your lights, where is that data going? When you connect your smart garage door why do you have to connect to the internet and some website to open or close your garage?

So many questions and so few answers. In fact non of these manufactures take any responsibility for anything. If you read your ELUA you can see they could burn your house down and have zero culpability.

So what is the right way? ZERO CLOUD DEVICES. Accept nothing less than no internet connected devices. If you want to connect to your devices you design the access. You wouldn't let someone else dictate the type of locks you put on your home, don't let them dictate you having to use their service. It is your home.

Smart Home Network

As you can see the typical smart home network can get complicated rather quickly. We will introduce several concepts that you will be able build your framework upon.

Typically a smart home will have 4 networks.

Public outside Internet
Public guest network
IOT device Network
Private network

These networks will talk to each other through the firewall and be reachable via one or more types of network options.

NAT, VPN, Forward or Reverse Proxy.

The internet or the cloud can be a dangerous place. Hackers are always trying to find new ways to exploit targets. Most of the time hacks are not done by people, they are automated bots testing for known vulnerabilities.

So why do we want to connect to the internet?

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