Z Wave Routing Basics

A section of topology from my network.

Again it is interesting and if there were any nodes with no neighbours it would be a concern but even with many neighbours routing may not be good. It shows no indication of signal strength.

The actual routes that have been calculated for each node by the controller are also not identified. The controller will hold up to 2 calculated routes for each node.

Slave devices have a small number of calculated routes sent to them on inclusion and on heal by the controller. The maximum number will be 4 per node that has an association to the salve device.

This is a two node network with controller and one slave that shows the simplest case

the blue squares indicate the nodes are neighbours. 1->2 and 2->1

TX and RX paths from device to devices are not necessarily symmetrical.

The most robust network would have all nodes in a good direct range of the controller. As this map gives no idea of the quality of the link you may see a direct link but it may not be used as the preferred route or indeed ever used with the routing algorithm in the controller preferring another route.

This only shows the topology as the controller sees the network. Even this will not show all possible routes.

Devices do not have a copy of this.

Any rows or columns that are all red are an issue. A resilient network would have 4 or more blue squares in every row and column but the more the better as some of those blue squares may not be very good links.