3.1 BDB Commissioning Modes

There are four types of commissioning modes available through BDB:

• Touchlink
• Network Steering
• Network Formation
• Finding and Binding (F&B)

Touchlink is the Zigbee Light Link profile equivalent for proximity-based commissioning. Network Steering enables permit joining (to open the network for joining), but only if the device is already on a network. If an end device or router type is not currently in a network, the device will try to join an existing network and only continue with permit joining if this procedure is successful. For coordinators (and routers if distributed networks are allowed), Network Formation will be invoked if Network Steering determines that there is not a suitable network to join. This will create a new centralized security network for coordinators or a distributed security network for router types.

F&B is invoked once the device is in a network and looks for other nodes that are also in F&B mode and interested in exchanging data from matching clusters. If matching clusters are found in other nodes, the appropriate binds are made. Once bindings are formed by the F&B procedure, any clusters with bindings that support ZCL attribute reporting will start doing so immediately to the destination set in the binding table entry. The BDB specification also mandates automatic ZCL attribute reporting for all reportable attributes. Users can configure a default reporting interval and reportable change amount.