Recently, I chanced upon The Register’s article about Google releasing the ‘Threads’ networking protocol to open source. Interested in what I might find, I had a look around.
Buried inside this now open source protocol, is a reference to some code like this OpenThread code example. Notice the explicit dependency on IPv6?
This means that if you decide to go with Google and run over OpenThreads, then you are explicitly going to have to learn how to live in an IPv6-only world. This example, according to my colleague Byron Ellacott, is a mapping that works onto 6lowpan over 802.15.4, which is a low-power, personal area, network specification.
What this all suggests is that future devices are going to be offered the ubiquity of scale, which came from Google getting behind Android, in the context of home network devices and IoT. Using this technology will lead to devices being available at scale and volume.
Take a look for yourself and tell us what you think about this initiative.
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I am following the Thread development for a while now and appreciate the more open approach. Pushing ipv6-only and developing ipv6-only network appliances has shown me that it is possible. And it scales sooo much better. I wish one of the big techs would push ipv6-only or at least ipv6-first more aggressively, e.g. by $veryConvinientDevice