Setting up your own Zigbee network certainly can appear as a milestone within the smart home. Traditionally, one would utilize all available wireless channels with free bandwidth before resorting to wired connections and eventually having to deal with congestion, both physically and between devices. That's when I discovered the power of Zigbee. It's not only perfectly suited to facilitating data transfers between Internet of Things (IoT) hardware, but it can also free up your home network for all the important clients.

It's an easy trap to fall into since Wi-Fi is used extensively throughout our lives. We've got routers and access points at home, at work, in hotels, coffee shops, and even on public transport. Wireless networking through your ISP-provided router (or custom-built firewall with wireless AP) is great for getting online without much trouble, but this can quickly spiral out of control once multiple clients are added to the mix. I'm not talking about appliances, computers, and phones, but sensors, smart plugs, and other IoT products you may have purchased over the holiday period.

This is when your Wi-Fi can quickly bog down with the demand, ruining it for devices that truly require reliable connections. That's where Zigbee comes in to literally save the day.

Why wireless is the go-to choice

It's convenient, easier, and promoted

When shopping around for smart home products, you'll likely see a sea of listings with "Wi-Fi" in the title, denoting connectivity with your existing 2.4 and/or 5 Ghz network. It's heavily promoted by companies that aim to make it as accessible as ever for anyone to create their own smart home with nothing but a few bulbs and plugs. Wi-Fi is already known by all, even those less tech-savvy. Attempting to explain Zigbee to someone who may not even know what a Wi-Fi SSID is may prove challenging, if not outright impossible. That's why Wi-Fi products usually win ... at first.

Then there's the setup process. Zigbee requires a gateway or hub, which serves as a means for devices to connect to other hardware and software using the wireless network protocol. Wi-Fi devices likely only require an app that can detect and set everything up in seconds. That said, once Zigbee is configured and ready to go, it's notably easier to add new clients, but we'll touch on that later. Traditionally, Zigbee was slightly more challenging for beginners to get started with than Wi-Fi. It's still the case today with many new products also launching with Wi-Fi.

When things can (and will) go wrong

You'll know when the router or access point becomes congested. Traffic grinds to a halt, connections can drop in and out, and it's just a terrible experience for everyone online. I lost count of how many times whatever we may be streaming on the big screen would buffer for what seemed like an eternity. Then there's the array of smart home devices themselves. Without reliable wireless connectivity, they can often act erratically. You'll notice sensors not picking up movement quickly enough (or at all), which can then cause problems for configured automations.

Attempting to toggle the lights on within the Home Assistant app would take a few seconds to activate. This doesn't sound like a pressing matter to lose sleep over, but it's annoying when it previously worked instantly. Having such a congested smart home could even have the side effect of draining battery-powered devices more quickly, resulting in more frequent trips to the local store to source some replacements. I wanted my smart home to be largely trouble-free, reducing the need to troubleshoot problems and deal with anything raised by household members.

That's when I finally made the switch to Zigbee, and I simply wonder why I failed to do so until now.

Zigbee solved my smart home woes

Reliable connectivity for all

Zigbee is a low-power wireless mesh network protocol designed for devices such as smart home products. If you're looking to buy some sensors and controllers, Zigbee is a great way to get them online. Zigbee doesn't outright replace an existing wireless network used by all other hardware. Instead, it operates alongside a home network, complementing it with additional bandwidth for countless low-power devices. And because it's a mesh network, you'll often find smart home devices doubling up as repeaters, creating a vast network of hardware with a single hub.

This allows all my smart home products to communicate with one another and for one another, making it easier to create a reliable and secure network that can be easily segregated from the rest of the local area network (LAN). All that's required is a Zigbee hub for everything to eventually route through. In my case, it's a single USB dongle from Sonoff, connected directly to a Proxmox server running Home Assistant OS. The software then manages everything, which makes it handy since Home Assistant is also where all my smart automations reside, keeping everything local.

Another fix that applies is closing down all external communication, which smart home products often enjoy carrying out on the LAN. Even a simple motion sensor could be configured to communicate via online servers somewhere in the world, which is then fed back to your home network. I have some of these, requiring a specific app on the phone to manage, and it's a little convoluted. Not with Zigbee. Every single Zigbee device on my LAN stays local. They only communicate with the Sonoff dongle and Home Assistant. It also makes them notably faster and more responsive.

Switching to Zigbee improved sensor battery life, allowed all my automations to activate without fail, and made any manual interaction with the smart home notably more responsive. Our wireless network is free to handle more clients, which can prove useful when visitors are over and require connectivity. I skipped the step when Zigbee became a fallback for Wi-Fi and went straight from zero to hero with a dedicated smart home network. We've got full offline capabilities should our fiber link drop for some reason, and the mesh is far superior to our access points for getting everything online.

Managing everything is a breeze, too. Should a Zigbee device go offline, the rest pick up the slack for the mesh to continue functioning as designed. And this network can handle some serious throughput with countless devices added through Home Assistant, and we've yet to encounter any dip in performance and responsiveness.

Zigbee won't fix everything

Some things simply make more sense to be run through Wi-Fi. Security cameras and other devices that require more bandwidth would be better suited on the primary network, but all the smaller IoT products can be switched over to Zigbee, opening up new routes for data to move across your network.