ESP WIFI-Mesh vs. Matter

[RichPiano]

What are espressifs thoughts on having matter protocol support for the ESP-WiFi mesh? My fear is that espressif will drop their proprietary wifi mesh in favour of the more standardized thread or zigbee implementations that also support matter.

Right now we're looking for a mesh protocol that supports a lot of devices ( > 1000) and allows sending OTA updates over the mesh (~2MB data).

[martins]

Thread or Zigbee seems to have only 250kbps throughput while ESP-WIFI-MESH and ESP-MDF can easily do 1-10Mbps. While 250kbps should be ok for 2MB OTA file (would take some time but will get there eventually), it is far insufficient for HD video for example.

That seems to me like pretty good reason to not drop it. Saying that, ESP-MDF latest release is still the v1.0 from April 21, 2020 and up until last month there has been no real update for like a year. I still hope they won't just ghost it and give it more attention that it needs.

[RichPiano]

Thank you martins. Do you know why Thread and Zigbee have this low throughput? Does it have something to do with the low-power aspect of those protocols?

[rrelande]

thanks,
MDF is indeed a strong offering, which seems to be working correrctly. a bit worrying is indeed the fact it is still in v1.0.
Right now I have the same fear as you about espressif dropping MDF support.
a first sign is that MDF is no longer advertised in the 'Solutions' while Matter and AWS Express are.

[martins]

Thank you martins. Do you know why Thread and Zigbee have this low throughput? Does it have something to do with the low-power aspect of those protocols?

I don't know any specifics about those, I suppose it is simply "by design".

a first sign is that MDF is no longer advertised in the 'Solutions' while Matter and AWS Express are.

Well, I didn't even notice. It is still listed under Products -> SDKs, so still not completely gone...