LonTalk is a protocol optimized for control. Originally developed by

Echelon Corporation Echelon Corporation was an American company which designed control networks to connect machines and other electronic devices, for the purposes of sensing, monitoring and control. Echelon is now owned by Adesto Technologies. History Echelon ...

for networking devices over media such as

twisted pair Twisted pair cabling is a type of wiring used for communications in which two conductors of a single circuit are twisted together for the purposes of improving electromagnetic compatibility. Compared to a single conductor or an untwisted b ...

, powerlines,

fiber optics An optical fiber, or optical fibre in Commonwealth English, is a flexible, transparent fiber made by drawing glass (silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair. Optical fibers are used most often as a means t ...

, and RF. It is popular for the automation of various functions in industrial control,

home automation Home automation or domotics is building automation for a home, called a smart home or smart house. A home automation system will monitor and/or control home attributes such as lighting, climate, entertainment systems, and appliances. It m ...

, transportation, and buildings systems such as

lighting Lighting or illumination is the deliberate use of light to achieve practical or aesthetic effects. Lighting includes the use of both artificial light sources like lamps and light fixtures, as well as natural illumination by capturing dayl ...

and

HVAC Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) is the use of various technologies to control the temperature, humidity, and purity of the air in an enclosed space. Its goal is to provide thermal comfort and acceptable indoor air quality. ...

; see

Intelligent building Building automation (BAS), also known as building management system (BMS) or building energy management system (BEMS), is the automatic centralized control of a building's HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), electrical, lighting, ...

, the protocol has now been adopted as an open international control networking standard in the ISO/IEC 14908 family of standards. Published through ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 6, this standard specifies a multi-purpose control network protocol stack optimized for smart grid, smart building, and

smart city A smart city is a technologically modern urban area that uses different types of electronic methods and sensors to collect specific data. Information gained from that data is used to manage assets, resources and services efficiently; in retur ...

applications.

LonWorks

LonTalk is part of the technology platform called

LonWorks LonWorks or Local Operating Network is an open standard (ISO/IEC 14908) for networking platforms specifically created to address the needs of control applications. The platform is built on a protocol created by Echelon Corporation for networking ...

Protocol

The protocol is defined by ISO/IEC 14908.1 and published by ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 6. The LonTalk protocol has also been ratified by standards setting bodies in the following industries & regions: *

ANSI The American National Standards Institute (ANSI ) is a private non-profit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. The organi ...

Standard ANSI/CEA 709.1 - Control networking (US) * EN 14908 - Building controls (EU) * GB/Z 20177.1-2006 - Control networking and building controls (China) *

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operati ...

1473-L - Train controls (US) * SEMI E54 - Semiconductor manufacturing equipment sensors & actuators (US) * IFSF - International forecourt standard for EU petrol stations * OSGP - A widely use protocol for smart grid devices built on ISO/IEC 14908.1 The protocol is only available from the official distribution organizations of each regional standards body or in the form of microprocessors manufactured by companies that have ported the standard to their respective chip designs.

Security

An April 2015 cryptanalysis paper claims to have found serious security flaws in the OMA Digest algorithm of the Open Smart Grid Protocol, which itself is built on the same EN 14908 foundations as LonTalk. The authors speculate that "every other LonTalk-derived standard" is similarly vulnerable to the key-recovery attacks described.Philipp Jovanovic and Samuel Neves. ''Dumb Crypto in Smart Grids: Practical Cryptanalysis of the Open Smart Grid Protocol''. https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/428 - The Cryptology ePrint Archive

References

External links

Echelon Corporation HomepageGlobal Engineering Documents (purchase the current EIA, non-ANSI, specification document for EIA/CEA 709.1Adept Systems
wrote the C Reference Implementation of the LonTalk protocol {{DEFAULTSORT:Lontalk Building automation Network protocols

LonWorks

Protocol

Security

See also

References

External links