Reviewed and updated in October 2026.
Continuing our exploration of the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem, this part focuses on short-range communication: the technologies that let IoT devices deliver their payload over distances of up to a few hundred meters.
This is part 2 of our IoT series. Part 1, Internet of Things (IoT), explains the basics.
At the core of any IoT device is the connection between the device and the gateway or cloud that receives its payload. The choice of technology is closely tied to the payload and the application: some use cases need an always-on, bidirectional data connection, others only an occasional heartbeat message.
There are dozens of protocols for connecting IoT devices. These are the most prominent short-range options.
Bluetooth goes back to development work at Ericsson in 1994; the first specification followed in 1999. It was introduced to replace serial cables between two personal devices, such as a wireless mouse and a computer or a headset and an MP3 player. Today it connects smartphones, tablets, wearables and many other everyday devices.
BLE became part of the Bluetooth core specification with Bluetooth 4.0 in 2010; the first smartphones supported it in 2011. A BLE device stays asleep most of the time and wakes only when a connection is initiated, and connection times are drastically shorter. Classic Bluetooth and BLE are different protocols, but both can coexist on the same device. Since Bluetooth 5, BLE offers a 2 Mbit/s mode and long-range modes that trade data rate for distance.
Wi-Fi has connected mobile devices to the internet in public and private places for more than 25 years. For IoT, it suits devices with higher power consumption (plugged in rather than battery powered) that need fast response times and high transmission rates to send large volumes of data over long periods, if not constantly. A static IP surveillance camera streaming 24/7 to a back-end server for monitoring and backup is a typical example. If your devices use networks you do not control, read Everyday Security Risks: Wi-Fi.
Z-Wave connects low-power devices in a mesh network. Like Zigbee, it needs a central hub to connect devices to the internet. Z-Wave started as a proprietary protocol; the Z-Wave Alliance has since turned the specification into an open, ratified standard, and silicon is now available from more than one vendor.
Z-Wave uses different frequencies depending on the country, so devices bought for the US market may not work in the EU and vice versa. A classic Z-Wave network supports up to 232 devices. Z-Wave Long Range, introduced in 2020, uses a star topology and supports up to 4,000 devices with ranges of a mile or more.
Zigbee is a low-power, open protocol that runs mainly in the license-free 2.4 GHz band in a mesh configuration. It needs a central hub (coordinator) to connect devices to the internet, but devices can also relay messages between each other, which extends the effective range. In theory, up to 65,000 devices can be connected in one network.
Many Zigbee devices are battery powered and cover a small area together. Zigbee is typically found in home automation and increasingly in commercial real estate, where sensors monitor the environment.
Although Zigbee is an open protocol, vendors can configure their devices so that only their own gateway supports every feature. A light bulb might switch on and off with any vendor's gateway, while dimming or color changes only work with the manufacturer's own.
Since this article first appeared, the Zigbee Alliance has renamed itself the Connectivity Standards Alliance and published Matter 1.0 in October 2022. Matter is an IP-based application standard for smart home devices that runs over Wi-Fi, Ethernet and Thread, a low-power mesh protocol for battery-operated devices. For buildings and smart home projects, it is worth checking whether devices support Matter before committing to a single vendor's ecosystem.
Now that you know how these options fit into the IoT ecosystem, here is what each technology does best. The values are typical figures; actual range and throughput depend on version, environment and configuration.
| Z-Wave | Zigbee | Bluetooth Low Energy | Bluetooth | Wi-Fi | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Data rate | up to 100 kbit/s | up to 250 kbit/s | up to 2 Mbit/s (Bluetooth 5) | up to 3 Mbit/s | up to 9.6 Gbit/s (Wi-Fi 6), more with Wi-Fi 7 |
| Range | approx. 50 m indoors, 200 m outdoors (line of sight); Z-Wave LR over 1.6 km | 10–100 m | 10–30 m, more in long-range mode | 10 m, up to 100 m in industrial applications | approx. 46 m indoors, 92 m outdoors |
| Encryption | AES 128-bit (S2) | AES 128-bit | AES 128-bit | AES 128-bit (Secure Connections) | AES 128-bit (WPA2/WPA3), 256-bit in WPA3-Enterprise 192-bit mode |
There is no one-size-fits-all solution for IoT communications. You can, however, select a technology that covers most of your use cases. Sometimes you will run two IoT networks side by side, and that is where an aggregator helps: ISEC7 SPHERE monitors IoT devices and connects their data to tools such as Microsoft Teams, ServiceNow or BlackBerry AtHoc, as described in IoT Device Management Made Easy.
The next part, IoT Communications, Long Range, covers LoRaWAN, Sigfox, NB-IoT and LTE-M. The series concludes with IoT Communications, Conclusion.
Would you like help reviewing your IoT communication options? Our team supports endpoint management projects end to end. Contact us with any questions.