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The ZigBee Alliance has announced the public availability of its third specification, ZigBee IP, built to support the forthcoming ZigBee Smart Energy version 2 standards.

This solution is a gift to product manufacturers, enabling them to use the ZigBee Smart Energy version 2 standard to generate multivendor interoperable solutions. ZigBee IP is introduced as a first open standard for an IPv6-based full wireless mesh networking solution that bids unified Internet connections to control low-power, low-cost devices.

Its robust architecture accompanies end-to-end IPv6 networking, placing the foundation for an Internet of Things without the need for intermediate gateways. This cost-effective and energy-efficient wireless mesh network is built on standard Internet protocols, such as 6LoWPAN, IPv6, PANA, RPL, TCP, TLS and UDP (News - Alert).

This innovative solution is boosted with variety of other features along with established, end-to-end security using TLS1.2 protocol, link layer frame security based on the AES-128-CCM (News - Alert) algorithm and support for public key infrastructure using standard X.509 v3 certificates and ECC-256 cipher suite.

"ZigBee IP provides another option for product manufacturers to add mesh networking to their products," said Tobin Richardson (News - Alert), chairman and CEO of the ZigBee Alliance. "We expect to see a wave of ZigBee Certified products based on ZigBee IP when Smart Energy Profile 2 is completed later this year since ZigBee IP was designed specifically to meet SEP2 requirements for the Smart Grid."

ZIP empowers low power nodes to participate natively with other IPv6-enabled Wi-Fi, Homeplug and Ethernet nodes without the complexity and cost of application layer gateways.

"ZigBee IP offers a significant step forward in the expansion of IP-based control," said Mark Grazier, marketing manager and ZigBee board member, Wireless Connectivity Solutions, Texas Instruments (News - Alert) Incorporated (TI). "Having low-power, low-cost wireless mesh devices that connect to a variety of Smart Grid IPv6-based protocols will further expand the Internet of Things."

The company is hosting a free public webinar where industry experts will discuss the unique capabilities of ZigBee IP on April 3 at 8:00 a.m. Pacific Time. For Info, log on to https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/417041311.