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OpenThread is a portable and flexible open-source implementation of the Thread networking protocol, created by Nest in active collaboration with Nordic to accelerate the development of products for the connected home.
Among OpenThread advantages are:
- a narrow platform abstraction layer that makes the OpenThread platform-agnostic.
- small memory footprint.
- support for system-on-chip (SoC), network co-processor (NCP) and radio co-processor (RCP) designs.
- official Thread certification, as it implements all features defined in the Thread 1.1.1 specification, including all Thread networking layers (IPv6, 6LoWPAN, IEEE 802.15.4 with MAC security, Mesh Link Establishment, Mesh Routing) and device roles, as well as Border Router support.
More information about Thread can be found at OpenThread.io and Thread Group.
OpenThread architecture
OpenThread's portable nature makes no assumptions about platform features. OpenThread provides the hooks to utilize enhanced radio and crypto features, reducing system requirements, such as memory, code, and compute cycles. This can be done per platform, while retaining the ability to default to a standard configuration. See OpenThread platform designs for more information.
Thanks to a narrow abstraction layer, OpenThread can run on either bare-metal or an OS. To date, OpenThread has been demonstrated to run on FreeRTOS, RIOT-OS, Zephyr OS, Linux, and macOS. See OpenThread application development for more information about running OpenThread on either of these environements.
OpenThread has a configurable build system with which a developer can enable or disable features as needed. Beyond the default GCC toolchain support in OpenThread, the nRf5 SDK for Thread and Zigbee provides support for IAR, Keil, and SES. For more information about toolchains supported by the nRF5 SDK for Thread and Zigbee, see Getting Started with Thread and Zigbee.
OpenThread online resources
Visit OpenThread GitHub repository for OpenThread files and code resources.
Check OpenThread.io for detailed documentation about the stack. You can find there information about the following features, and more:
- OpenThread Node Roles and Types
- Network Discovery and Formation
- Enhanced optional features, such as Child Supervision
Portions of this page are reproduced from work created and shared by Google and used according to terms described in the Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License.
Thread is a registered trademark of the Thread Group, Inc.