The Things Network upgrade to V3

TTN V2 to V3 Upgrade
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As announced during the opening keynote of The Things Conference 2021, The Things Network is upgrading to The Things Stack V3. Finally!

There are a few important things that we want to inform you about.

  1. We have a new single sign-on system: The Things ID. You can use the same username and password to login with The Things ID as you use here on the forums, thethingsnetwork.org and the V2 Console.

  2. The Things Industries is going to operate all clusters of The Things Network. We want to harmonize host names, versions, configuration, features, etc. We already deployed the first cluster of The Things Network: eu1: https://eu1.cloud.thethings.network/console. You can login with The Things ID. The first two clusters that we deploy next are North America and Australia. We will put a poll here with request for interest in other regions globally.

  3. People who are operating a private network with The Things Stack, will be able to connect private networks to Packet Broker for LoRaWAN peering. That way, you can contribute to The Things Network community network and use the coverage of The Things Network. Before, you needed to have your own NetID (via LoRa Alliance membership), but you can now lease a DevAddr block from The Things Network as well. More information on this soon. If you can’t wait, DM me.

  4. Packet Broker currently routes traffic from gateways connected to The Things Network V2 to V3. That is, gateway coverage of V2 is available in V3. But not the other way around: gateways already connected directly to V3 will not be available for applications in V2. More info here. Should this become really problematic, we may want to support this, but this isn’t easy.

  5. Gateway migration does not happen automatically. So if you login to The Things Network V3 Console, you don’t see your gateways. You need to create them there, and configure your gateways to the V3 endpoint. While doing that, it may be a good time to see if your gateway supports Basic Station. For gateway configuration, see Gateways | The Things Stack for LoRaWAN

  6. Application and device migration also does not happen automatically either. However, we do have migration tools available, see Migrating from The Things Network Stack V2 | The Things Stack for LoRaWAN

    • It is highly recommended to migrate devices without the security session. This means that devices have to rejoin on V3. This is because we changed some LoRaWAN settings and we issue a new DevAddr that points to the V3 clusters. Packet Broker does not route traffic from the current V2 DevAddr ranges to the V3 clusters. Most devices will automatically revert to join mode when they figured out they lost link, by link check MAC commands, expecting acknowledgements sometimes, etc
    • If you really need to retain your LoRaWAN security session, you need to make sure that the gateways covering your end devices are already connected to a V3 cluster, because your old DevAddr does not get routed by Packet Broker from V2 to V3. Note that migrating gateways already may break deployments from other community members
    • Activation by personalization (ABP) devices, i.e. devices that have a fixed DevAddr and session keys, are personalized for a specific network, in this case, The Things Network V2. You should consider V3 as a new network. So if you want to keep using ABP and you cannot use over-the-air activation (OTAA), it is highly recommended to create a new ABP device in V3 and reconfigure the device with the new session. Note that the (default) RX1 delay has changed from 1 to 5 seconds.

  7. [updated]
    Migration will involve much more than just some copy paste actions.
    As the migration impacts the whole The Things Network Community we expect many users will turn to the forum for questions, tips and issues they may run into during the migration.
    The ‘V2 to V3 Upgrade’ category and subcategories were created to support this and make it easier to categorize and find information related to the upgrade.

    For information and questions about the V2 to V3 upgrade please check the new
    V2 to V3 Upgrade categories. For new items please create a new topic using one of the new V2 to V3 Upgrade categories.

    For instructions see: How to use the new V2 to V3 Upgrade categories

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