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We propose a model of autonomous, open, federated networks interconnected with each other and TheThingsNetwork as the global reference for the internet of things open network.
Since its beginnings, XOIC’s (xoic.coop) aim has been to promote the use of common infrastructures based on open solutions and protocols. In the world of the Internet of Things (IoT) the network paradigm that meets these conditions is The Things Network (TTN, thethingsnetwork.org) an open network using LoRaWAN based communications. It is not surprising that it was members of the TTN community in Catalonia (TTNcat, ttn.cat) who started the XOIC working group within the femProcomuns cooperative (femprocomuns.coop).
Moving from TTNcat to XOIC happened for two main reasons. The first reason was that a legal figure covering the activities that were more and more requested from the administration, companies and other groups was necessary: activities such as network deployment or IoT and LoRaWAN training. The second reason was beyond TTN.
XOIC was born with the intention of exploring other open technologies for the Internet of Things and, above all, other network models. From the beginning, we considered the benefits of launching a model of federated servers, inspired by Fedivers (https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedivers) but using existing peering or roaming tools among existing servers in the LoRaWAN ecosystem. These resources are not very different from those widely used among mobile operators or in the IP world. We keep our mind clear that our goal was not to make a “TTN in Catalonia” isolated from the global TTN project. We don’t want to be a silo. We want to be connected.
Over the last year and a half, doubts about the future of TTN have grown, partly because of the state of the project itself, partly because the entire technological and social ecosystem has matured. At the same time we met TICAE (ticae.com) for different projects (Granollers, Manlleu,…). TICAE is an Internet service provider Guifi.net operator. Since its beginning, TTNcat has mirrored Guifi.net, and we have collaborated with different Guifi.net operators. It seems to be a good time to consider a change, and in TICAE we have a partner sharing the same philosophy and desire.
XOIC & TICAE’s LoRaWAN network server (https://ns01.lorawan.ticae.network/) aims to attend people, projects, and administrations searching for:
- A LoRaWAN network server placed locally.
- Local professionals with large experience in LoRaWAn network and services providing support and assistance.
- Affordable prices from small number of devices up to massive deployments.
- Free of charge testing platform up to 10 devices.
- Peering to TTN through Packet Broker: your TTN enabled devices are being attended by the gateways configured against our server.
This new server is hosted in a Proxmox Cluster in High Availability, with machines running Debian 11 Bullseye using ChirpStack v4, a free software LoRAWAN network server with a live community behind. Supports UDP Packet Forwarder and BasicStation (both at the EU868 band) and also UDP Packet Forwarder for 2.4GHz LoRa. It is connected to TTN via Packet Broker and using NetID #C00017.