Matter, Thread, and Zigbee are not competitors — they live at different layers of the stack, and most of the confusion in smart-home discussions comes from pretending otherwise. We separate the application layer from the transport, walk the IPv6 mesh that Thread builds, explain border routers and commissioning, and look honestly at what interoperability delivers in 2026 versus what the marketing claims.
Thread
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Matter, Thread, and Zigbee Untangled