Connect

This section explains how to connect The Things Stack to Packet Broker.

The Things Stack Cloud and Community Edition are already connected to Packet Broker. If your deployment is already connected, proceed to configure Packet Broker.

Prerequisites

  1. A LoRa Alliance NetID or a tenant of a host NetID
  1. Access to Packet Broker with an API key
  1. The Things Stack installed and configured. See Getting Started
  2. Packet Broker CLI installed and configured. See Packet Broker CLI

Define DevAddr Prefix by NetID

This guide uses The Things Network NetID 000013 as example, which has DevAddr prefix 26000000/7.

If you own a NetID, enter your NetID to obtain your DevAddr prefix:

Your DevAddr prefix is:

See a full list of NetIDs, DevAddr Prefix assignments, operators, and regions they are allocated to in The Things Network LoRaWAN documentation.

Configure Packet Broker Agent

The Packet Broker Agent component of The Things Stack connects to Packet Broker. The Packet Broker Agent can be configured as Forwarder and as Home Network in your ttn-lw-stack.yaml configuration file:

# Add Packet Broker configuration to your configuration file:

# Packet Broker Agent configuration
pba:
  # See https://packetbroker.net for available hosts
  data-plane-address: 'eu.packetbroker.io:443'
  net-id: '000013'
  tenant-id: 'my-tenant' # Leave empty if you own the NetID and you don't use tenants
  cluster-id: 'my-cluster' # Unique identifier of your routing cluster
  authentication-mode: 'oauth2'
  oauth2:
    client-id: '' # API key ID
    client-secret: '' # Secret API key value
  forwarder:
    enable: true
    # generate 16 bytes (openssl rand -hex 16)
    token-key: '00112233445566770011223344556677'
  home-network:
    enable: true

See Packet Broker Agent configuration for all configuration options.

Configure Gateway Server

Configure the Gateway Server to forward traffic for the current network to the Network Server in the cluster, and route all traffic to Packet Broker (via Packet Broker Agent):

# Edit the Gateway Server configuration in your configuration file:

# Gateway Server configuration
gs:
  forward:
  # Forward traffic to the Network Server in the cluster
  - 'cluster=26000000/7' # Enter your DevAddr range
  # Forward all traffic also to Packet Broker
  - 'packetbroker=00000000/0'

See Gateway Server configuration for all configuration options.

Configure Network Server

Configure the Network Server to issue device addresses (DevAddr) that fall within your NetID:

# Edit the Network Server configuration in your configuration file:

# Network Server configuration.
ns:
  net-id: '000013'

If you are using a NetID tenant with one or more DevAddr blocks, configure the Network Server to use those blocks:

# Network Server configuration.
ns:
  net-id: '000013'
  dev-addr-prefixes:
  - '27111100/16'
  - '27222200/16'

By default, the Network Server uses NetID 000000 which is intended for experimentation purposes. Only devices that are activated with a DevAddr that refers to a NetID will have their traffic routed by Packet Broker to your network.

See Network Server configuration for all configuration options.

Configure Packet Broker

When The Things Stack is connected to Packet Broker, you can proceed with Packet Broker Configuration.

See Publish and Subscribe Traffic on how to publish test messages and subscribe to traffic using Packet Broker CLI.

Note:
Packet Broker Agent uses the configured cluster-id as Forwarder ID and subscription group.
← Packet Broker Configure →