Reiterating the design principles, support for variable cell sizes, core components and introducing private networking using TTN, cloud platform integrations, the fair access policy and the deployment timeline

2. Technical Update
Johan Stokking
Tech Lead, The Things Network
johan@thethingsnetwork.org
February 2016

3. Design Principles
• Standards compliant
• Make everything open source
• Design for distribution and decentralization
• Support small cells and high capacity
• No geographical borders
• Compliant with spectrum regulations

4. Cells

5. Cells

6. Cells

7. Core Components
R
Router
Routes raw packets from
gateways to brokers
NC
Network Controller
Node state, data rate and
frequency management
H
Application Handler
Decryption, deduping,
works on behalf of apps
A
Application
Application or IoT cloud
platform
Gateway
Send data to and receive
data from nodes
B
Broker
Decoupling from router
to handler

8. H
S1, S2
S2, S1, S3
S2, S1, S3
S3, S2
B
Public and Private Networking
R
ANC
Private Network
B
R NC
HBR
NC
H
H
H
NR
A
A
Private Storage Handler
A

9. Cloud Platform Integrations

10. Private Networking
Run The Things Network
components on-premise:
Docker images are made
available and maintained by
the core team
A private networks
optionally falls back to
community coverage and
vice-versa

11. Fair Access Policy
• All users need to be able to reliably use the network
• We need to comply with global spectrum regulations
• We want to support at least 1.000 nodes per gateway
• Duty cycle of the gateway needs to remain << 10%
• Achieved by limiting air time per node to 30 seconds per day
• This is a guideline for fair access: it will not be enforced
immediately

12. Don’t waste your airtime!
Bloated JSON:
{ “Count”: 1234, "Temperature": 20.635 }
40 bytes: 292 messages per day
Remove counter, spaces and compact names:
{“t”:20.63}
11 bytes: 486 messages per day
No JSON:
20.63
5 bytes: 582 messages per day
Signed 16 bit integer
0x080F
2 bytes: 648 messages per day

13. Timeline
Today
March 24th
Staging environment
June 27th
Kickstarter shipping
May 25th
Production environment,
Docker images and dashboard
July 31st
Distributed networking
August 31st
Croft offline
World tour Transition period

14. How to contribute
Do you want to contribute to developing The Things Network? Here’s
how to contact us:
1. Join Slack: http://slack.thethingsnetwork.org
2. Register on the forum: http://forum.thethingsnetwork.org
3. Check out GitHub and issues:
http://github.com/TheThingsNetwork/ttn
4. Sign up for the newsletter: http://thethingsnetwork.org (go to Join
Team)