Z/IP Program: As a big step to broaden adoption

As an accelerator for the adoption of Z-Wave wireless home-control technology, the Z/IP program drives convergence of Z-Wave and TCP/IP. As with all previous Z-Wave protocol advances, Z/IP remains backwards compatible with existing Z-Wave products while adding compliant TCP/IP services to Z-Wave nodes and allows the use of Z-Wave device and command classes in TCP/IP networks.

Compatibility with the Internet Protocol’s Transmission Control Protocol (TCP/IP) enables remote access to a Z-Wave home-control system in a standardized way from the Web browser of any PC or cellphone without loading special software applications onto them, said Zensys marketing EVP Lew Brown. Compatibility also simplifies the integration of Z-Wave systems into increasingly popular IP-based control systems, he said.

"Using TCP/IP transmission will help to accelerate the adoption of applications for multiple uses of Z-Wave around the home, as well as interoperability among multiple vendors," added Martin Manniche, a senior director at Cisco’s Linksys division. Cisco is an investor in Zensys.

With a converged Z-Wave/IP standard, "all Z-Wave network nodes would be addressable from any browser in the world, and all devices in the home would be on a single IP network," a spokeswoman continued. The advanced standard “will remain backwards compatible with existing Z-Wave products while adding compliant TCP/IP services to Z-Wave nodes,” she noted.

In the future, we can use Z-Wave/IP technology to select remotely Z-Wave devices in the home to stream Internet content from the Web, Brown noted. That capability will become more important as Zensys transitions from its current-generation technology, which delivers control commands wirelessly at up to 40kbps, to a 200kbps version in chips meant for the U.S. market, he noted. Z-Wave started out as a 9.6kbps technology.