To some extent, Thread and Matter are direct replacements for Z-wave at different levels of the stack. There are some different pros/cons between the two though. The major advantage of 6LoWPAN is that it shares a lot of the design and implementation with existing network stacks and can be carried directly over IP networks. This is expected to make more complex 6LoWPAN topologies much easier to implement (e.g. 6LoWPAN traffic can be easily forwarded over the internet by a gateway). None of this is really anything that can't be done with Z-wave, but 6LoWPAN makes it easier by having a lot of common design and implementation with ubiquitous IP stacks. Matter itself has the major advantage of being a newer and higher-level design than Z-Wave which should result in more consistent interoperability of a wider range of devices.
Z-wave will probably remain superior for battery-powered sensors into the future, because Thread doesn't allow for the extremely aggressive sleep schedules (e.g. sleep mode for 18 hours at a time between supervisions for security sensors) that Z-Wave does... although we can of course debate how wise it is to only perform supervision every 18 hours, even if UL allows it for burglar alarms.
IIRC Zigbee is: 802.15.4 -> "Zigbee"
And my (mostly incomplete) understanding of matter is it's: 802.15.4 -> 6LoWPAN -> Thread -> "The device model of Zigbee"-like Application Layer (for thread devices)
They will only use "thread" for low data rate communications. They will all have Wi-Fi. thus the ipv6/cloud/tcp/udp talk.
I want _just_ thread out of these things. I want my devices to talk to my zwave/zigbee/thread network and to not talk to the cloud without my permission.
AFAICT, devices that don't need high-data rate connectivity aren't required to have WiFi. IOW a thread camera will have WiFi but a thread light switch doesn't have to.
And I assume there is no way to make sure that the camera never connects to the internet without setting up firewall rules on my router. Because the announcement specifically calls out the ability for smart devices to phone home as a perk, I imagine blocking devices from phoning home isn't an option, and you have to assume that any device with WiFi will attempt to phone home even if it's not "smart".
If there was a way on hubs to have mobile phone like permissions. "This device can use local WiFi" and "This device can access the internet for Smart stuff" as separate permissions, I might be ok. But since most WiFi IoT devices are dumb and just punch a tunnel through your firewall so you can access them with a mobile app and wind up in botnets, I don't have a lot of faith in IoT companies to do it right, so until I can be assured (and verify myself) that WiFi doesn't mean "can phone home", theres no way in hell Im going to use Matter wifi devices.
