What Is Packet Broker?

Packet Broker is a neutral and open Internet of Things packet broker allowing IoT operators to interoperate according to the open principles of the internet.

Packet Broker can be used to exchange traffic with other LoRaWAN networks to share coverage and improve the overall network performance.

Who is it for?

Exchanging traffic can be beneficial for all public and private LoRaWAN network operators: it can improve overall network performance by increasing resilience against gateway failures, expanding coverage area and optimizing end device battery life by communicating with the nearest gateways.

Typical Use Cases

  1. Forward uplink traffic received by your gateways from devices to their home network. The home network may also use your gateways to transmit downlink traffic to their devices. You can also put commercial agreements in place to monetize coverage.
  2. Receive uplink traffic for your devices from other networks, and use those other networks to transmit downlink traffic to your end devices.

How Does it Work?

Packet Broker distinguishes two types of networks: Forwarders and Home Networks. Forwarders are networks with gateways: they forward uplink messages from the gateways to Packet Broker, and downlink messages from Packet Broker back to the gateways. Home Networks are networks with end devices.

Your network server can be a Forwarder, a Home Network or both. This means that you can make your physical gateway infrastructure available to other networks without having end devices. Likewise, you can deploy end devices as a Home Network, without physical gateway infrastructure.

Packet Broker routes uplink messages from Forwarders to Home Networks based on the 32-bit DevAddr in the uplink message. The first part of the DevAddr is the NetID, a globally unique identifier of a LoRaWAN network. Packet Broker uses the NetID to lookup the Home Network. Besides identifying Home Networks by NetID, Packet Broker also supports tenants. Tenants use a DevAddr block of a Home Network host.

For example, a message with DevAddr 27ABCD12 has NetID 000013 (owned by The Things Network Foundation). The DevAddr block 27ABCD00 to 27ABCDFF might be assigned to a private network example-com. That DevAddr block is noted as 27ABCD00/24: 24 significant bits. Packet Broker identifies the Home Network then as NetID 000013 and tenant ID example-com.

Note:
The Things Network is identified by NetID is 000013 and tenant ID ttn.

Routing Policies

Routing policies define the rules that Forwarders configure for routing messages to Home Networks. Routing policies are peer-to-peer: a Forwarder can define policies with each individual Home Network. Forwarders can also define an optional default routing policy that is used as a fallback when no specific policy is defined.

Forwarders can configure the following things in a routing policy:

Type Uplink Downlink Description
Join O O Join-request (uplink) and join-accept (downlink) messages
MAC payload O O Data messages with FPort 0 (for network layer instructions)
Application payload O O Data messages with FPort 1 or higher (for application layer payload)
Signal quality O RSSI and SNR information
Localization O Gateway locations, timestamps and signal quality

For instance, a Forwarder may wish to configure three policies:

  1. With Home Network that has NetID 000013 and tenant ID ttn (The Things Network): all message types. This would mean to forward join-requests and join-accepts, uplink and downlink MAC and application payload messages, and signal quality and localization information.
  2. With Home Network that has NetID 000013 and tenant ID example-com: only join-requests, join-accepts and uplink and downlink MAC and application payload messages. This would mean to not forward the metadata.
  3. A default policy (for all other networks): only uplink MAC and application payload messages. That would mean to not forward join-requests and join-accepts, and to not forward the metadata.

LoRaWAN Roaming vs Packet Broker

Packet Broker is a global backbone for LoRaWAN traffic. It is designed to securely exchange traffic between LoRaWAN networks.

Packet Broker is a LoRaWAN Roaming Hub for passive roaming and device activation, but it goes beyond that:

  • Packet Broker allows for individual packet selection: networks do not get charged for traffic they did not consume.
  • Packet Broker separates traffic routing from billing and clearing: networks are free to put commercial agreements in place to settle balances.
  • Packet Broker separates payload from metadata: networks only get charged if they decide to get payload or metadata decrypted.
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