2021
July
15

The Value and Benefits of Thread Certification

By Tom Sciorilli, Director of Certification, Thread Group and Brent Brooks, Director, Sales & Strategic Marketing, MMB Networks

In the years since Thread V1.1 certification launched, the landscape has changed in many exciting ways, as members new and old have seen the promise of Thread technology and proposed enhancements to make it the “go-to” choice for many residential and commercial use cases. As the specification and stacks have evolved, the value of Thread certification has grown even stronger. With the approaching launch of Thread V1.2 certification, it is useful to revisit the general value of certifying products and specifically how that value is realized in Thread certification.

Why Product Certification is Critical for Success
Wireless products undergo numerous certifications – most commonly for mandatory electrical safety and regulatory spectrum compliance (examples include UL, CE, CCC, FCC, ISED) – to be offered for sale. Beyond mandatory government certifications, product manufacturers have to consider pursuing certifications for many of the technologies implemented within their products.

Depending on its origin, each technology certification may be mandatory or optional, but the common objective of all programs is to help product manufacturers succeed in the market by providing an independent assessment and industry-recognized acknowledgement of the correct implementation of a technology. Let’s consider briefly how Thread certification accomplishes this objective.

Helping Product Managers Delight End Users and Open Up Market Opportunities
Product managers have the difficult task of defining a competitive device for the market, getting the device adopted by key ecosystems, and then maintaining their company’s reputation with ecosystem managers and end users through the products they ultimately choose to build.

In simplest terms, they need to get “in the door” with design wins and keep/increase wins by delivering a high-quality product that works correctly as expected and interoperable, both out-of- the-box, and throughout the product life cycle.

• Ecosystem managers and service providers have routinely recognized the inherent value of technology certifications such as Thread and commonly require it for inclusion in their environments. Certifying your products ensures you can gain access to new sales channels, increase adoption of your products, and find new revenue opportunities.
• Companies have already experienced great success leveraging software updates to bring Thread support instantly to life in existing devices already deployed in the market. Thread certification helps ensure those ‘in market’ devices will function correctly post-update.
• Thread certification gives vendors higher confidence that their Thread products will foster the end user/customer experience they intended, from the critical unboxing/initial impression phase throughout the entire product life cycle.

Thread certification provides a path to a better end user experience, removing inconsistencies related to connectivity, the frustration that comes along with it, and increasing the trust you need to instill in your products and brand in order to succeed long term.

Helping Engineers Keep the Thread Magic Going
Engineers know well that delivering an exciting new value added feature like Thread support is a great victory, but it is just the first step in a product’s journey. The celebration can quickly fade and turn into a stressful dilemma for both end users and the product/engineering teams if the technology does not work correctly after deployment in the field or stops working when a random software update happens somewhere within the ecosystem.

• The Thread Certification Program provides a common benchmark for Thread devices using a unique testing approach to verify that your product is working properly.
• The costs and reputation damage associated with customer returns and/or field service calls can mount very quickly. Thread certification helps to minimize post-sale support costs and maintain the end user’s trust in your products.
• Product Teams can continuously build more value and trust over time. Thread certification of new specification releases, such as V1.2, includes consideration for backwards compatibility testing with prior specifications/devices, making an upgrade deployment more straightforward and less error prone.

Thread Certification – Going Further for Members
From its inception, Thread Group has held a rigorous testing and certification program as a cornerstone of enabling products that connect effortlessly and securely. This commitment is so strong that each Thread product must be certified in order to be granted intellectual property rights (IPR) to Thread technology.

Thread certification can be granted to end products via the Built on Thread logo, and to components via the Thread Certified Component logo. A component can be thought of as an ingredient or building block, providing Thread functionality - typically a Thread radio, relevant processor, and a Thread software stack - to an end product. While end product manufacturers are free to adopt and deploy any Thread implementation, it is highly recommended to use a Thread Certified Component.

• At a minimum, use of a Thread Certified Component greatly improves the likelihood that the end product will pass Thread Certification testing smoothly.
• In the best (limited) cases, use of Thread Certified Components may allow a Thread end product to skip testing entirely and inherit the component’s certification.

Technology certifications are valuable tools for enabling members’ product success, but not all test programs are created equal. It is common for programs to screen for conformance to a specification, but rigorous programs, like Thread, strive for more by including multi-vendor interoperability test coverage to verify that the product interacts successfully with other vendor products across the range of features of the specification.

Interoperability is a difficult coverage to add and maintain, but it is a critical extra step – it uncovers specification interpretation differences and can indirectly expose issues in the implementation of supporting RFCs and lower-layer networking methodologies that would otherwise cause perplexing failures when the right combination of factors occurred in the field. This is real-world value and has caught issues in different certification runs, including Thread. Leveraging a unique combination of conformance and interoperability test coverage, members can trust that Thread certification works harder to give higher confidence that a product will work correctly with other Thread devices and networks throughout its life cycle.

To make the certification testing effort simpler for members, Thread Group built an automated test platform, composed of market-leading Thread network stacks, executing an expert-vetted test suite that is continually updated with quality and coverage improvements. To ensure integrity throughout the certification process, a global, third-party, ISO-compliant lab network carries out the testing on candidate devices. For real-world applicability, devices are tested in their go-to-market state with production firmware. To make it easier for members to succeed on their first test lab visit, Thread Group provides the same test platform software to Contributor and Sponsor members for free, and to Implementers as an add-on fee.

Certification Inheritance - Helping Broaden Deployment
Along with providing a robust testing program. Thread Group recognizes the importance of helping members’ entire product lines be compliant with the important certification requirement for IPR licensing; to support that, a certification inheritance option is available which allows members to easily achieve certification across entire families of end products which reuse the same Thread system (chip and stack) and the same use cases.

In addition to internal product portfolio-based inheritance, it is possible, on a case-by-case basis, for Thread-enabled end products to inherit the certification of the Thread component used within. Product manufacturers should check with their component supplier to confirm the device’s certification status and understand the supplier’s ability to generate a “locked-down” version of the certified component’s Thread stack, and provide supporting data that reinforces an inheritance claim.

Get Started with Thread Today
Technology certification programs are a valuable part of the path to market, increasing product teams’ confidence in the robustness of their solutions. Thread Group provides that confidence for Thread-enabled products through the Thread certification program. Through the unique conformance and interoperability coverage provided by Thread certification testing and alternate market-adoption paths enabled by certification inheritance, Thread Group members can be confident that a Thread certified product is uniquely capable of delivering a great customer experience.

Join Thread Group, review the detailed member training material, and start an application for Thread product certification today!

For more preview information, please visit the Thread certification process and Authorized Test Labs documents linked here. An overview on Thread Certification is also available here.