Introduction

OpenThread, released by Google, is an open-source implementation of the Thread networking protocol. Google has released OpenThread to make the technology used in Nest products broadly available to developers to accelerate the development of products for the connected home.

The Thread specification defines an IPv6-based reliable, secure, low-power wireless device-to-device communication protocol for home applications. OpenThread implements all Thread networking layers, including IPv6, 6LoWPAN, IEEE 802.15.4 with MAC security, Mesh Link Establishment, and Mesh Routing.

The following videos help understand the terms: mesh, Thread, and OpenThread:

• in this first video (duration 5:14), Mesh Networking is explained
• then, this video (duration 4:58) offers a brief overview of the Thread Wireless Technology
• finally, this video (duration 1:20) explains how OpenThread is used in Google/Nest products

A longer video is available here …

This lab will walk you through using Docker to simulate a Thread mesh network on emulated devices.

What you’ll learn:

• How to set up the OpenThread build toolchain
• How to simulate a Thread network
• How to authenticate Thread nodes
• How to manage a Thread network with OpenThread Daemon

Pull the Docker image

Open a terminal window and pull the openthread/environment Docker image. This image features OpenThread and OpenThread Daemon pre-built and ready to use for this lab.

docker pull openthread/environment:latest

Simulate a Thread network.

The example application you’ll use for this lab demonstrates a minimal OpenThread application that exposes the OpenThread configuration and management interfaces via a basic command-line interface (CLI).