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“Security” by itself is a meaningless concept. You need to formulate a threat model before you can say anything.
If your threat model is actors on the internet getting into your network using something related to the devices, then WiFi is many times worse. The devices are full network devices, and given for example a rogue firmware update, they can spawn a reverse shell let the actor into your network. This can and should of course be mitigated using the usual network engineering techniques. Zigbee is inherently different. Your light bulbs have no ip address, can’t route IP into your network on their own.
Another threat model is local information leak, someone in your area is listening to your radio emissions to determine if you’re home etc. This is about the same for zigbee and WiFi. They are both encrypted, but the real information is in whether there is communication, not the payload.
In terms of longevity, I would be wary of adding more 2.4 devices on your WiFi network. I can’t wait forcing the whole band.
Lots of people instantly think of security when they look at WiFi-connected IoT devices, but oftentimes they never think of the WiFi signal itself - what with all the added communication noise and send time limitations of having lots of small devices.
Especially with regular consumer equipment, it doesn't actually require that many devices to fully saturate a regular home router or AP.
That's a good point. Another one I have is sort of failure tolerance. I used to have a really unreliable router which would often crash and could only be reset using a full power reset. While it was in this state, wifi obviously stopped working but my zigbee devices where still available. I used to have a zigbee button linked to a smart plug for toggling my router off and on again.
This shouldn't be a concern for most people obviously but I wanted to share my experience.
Another point I want to mention is that zigbee works at 2.4Ghz just like basic wifi so they can still interfere with each other.
Zwave on the other hand uses another frequency (I think it was around 860MHz) but is more expensive.
Do you think I'll be able to use 915Mhz (I'm in the US) for ZigBee devices using the Sonoff controller and IKEA devices/custom devices? Or is it reserved for specific purposes?
Isn't Zigbee always on 2.4GHz regardless of country? Trying to shift the frequency to 915MHz for all devices sounds like a lot of work with questionable benefit
Won't it interfere with 2.4Ghz WiFi?
Well, theoretically yes but it doesn't continuously send data and both WiFi and Zigbee also allow for operation on various channels. Does your neighbors WiFi interfere with yours?
Also, most WiFi devices now support 5GHz WiFi anyway so it's even less of an issue anymore. The bigger problem would probably be WiFi interfering with ZigBee. But again, that can be resolved by changing the channels.
Absolutely! If you have devices that still only support b/g, they are going to eat up your air time really quick.
My apologies, I needed to read up on the encryption that ZigBee uses a bit more. I have confidence that anyone snooping on the RF emanating from my flat will very likely not be able to decrypt ZigBee traffic (for that network will likely contain sensitive information). Some of my devices will likely transmit close to all the time (humidity sensor for a plant, for example), I'm hoping such traffic can mask the other more sensitive traffic, like of infrared sensors set up to react to opening the door, as an example.
Can I use ZigBee at another frequency than 2.4Ghz? I noticed that the US has another operational frequency for ZigBee but I don't see it discussed very often