Z-Wave is, by far, the most widely used wireless protocol for the home automation industry. There is no area, however, where the use of Z-Wave technology is more prevalent than in the security industry. By far, Z-Wave’s market presence dwarfs all other technologies, as the vast majority of the companies that manufacture panels have selected Z-Wave as their lifestyle technology of choice, including such security-industry heavyweights as Honeywell, 2GIG, ADT, Napco, Ingersoll Rand/Nexia Intelligence, and Alarm.com, to name just a few. In fact, 90% of the North American security company-based lifestyle solutions are powered by Z-Wave.
The key to Z-Wave’s adoption by the vast majority of the security industry’s lifestyle solutions is its large ecosystem of certified interoperable products. Z-Wave has over 1700 products from over 450 different manufacturers, with all of them interoperable and backward-compatible with each other. No other technology comes close to this kind of extensive ecosystem. Businesses and their customers need to know that they have choices when selecting products, and are not tied to the success and business plans of any one supplier. Z-Wave’s extensive ecosystem provides choice, flexibility and of course, security.
Unlike other household wireless technologies, Z-Wave is optimized for home control. Its bandwidth, efficiency and low power consumption have been specifically designed for these applications.
As an example, battery-operated Z-Wave devices, such as security sensors, can last for years. Wi-Fi on the other hand, is optimized for high bandwidth, high-power data transmission using a server-client topology. Wi-Fi can be used for home control, but requires too much energy for battery-powered devices, and is subject to unreliability through traffic jams in homes with multiple Wi-Fi devices, which are common. Bluetooth is optimized for short-range, high-bandwidth, one-to-few topology. It doesn’t have the range or network size for home control. Near Field Communication (NFC) is optimized for very short range; a foot or two and one-to-one topologies. There is nothing wrong with these other technologies, but they serve different purposes than Z-Wave.
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Click on the graphic to see a head-to-head comparison detailing the pros and cons of these enabling technologies, and you’ll see why Z-Wave has become the virtually unanimous choice for the security industry and their smart security solutions.