The Things Stack follows a API driven microservice architecture, well suited for high availability and reliability. The Things Stack has the following main components. Component (Service) Short Description Gateway Server GS Maintains connections with gateways supporting the Basic Station, UDP, MQTT and gRPC protocols. It forwards uplink traffic to Network Servers directly or indirectly, and schedules downlink traffic on gateways. Network Server NS Handles the LoRaWAN® network layer, including MAC commands, regional parameters and adaptive data rate (ADR).

The Things Stack supports versions 1.0.x and 1.1.x of the LoRaWAN® specifications.

The streaming data integrations provide multiple formats for the delivery of application uplink messages and downlink queue operations. This section will delve into the common formats used by them.

The Things Stack uses a port per protocol, with a TLS counterpart when applicable. Ports can be shared by multiple services using the same protocol, i.e. gRPC services sharing management, data and events services.

To access the Console, register a command line client, connect gateways, or schedule uplinks via webhooks, it is necessary to know the server address of your The Things Stack instance. This section contains information about addresses for different The Things Stack deployments.