Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by FerdSlav 1761 days ago
It's a bit of an open secret at this point that Amazon is also using 802.11 PAF (Public Action Frames) to aid in the magic "unbox an amazon device and it immediately is online". Would admittedly be interesting to have this side of the Echo devices also look at as the paper seems to not mention this portion of the OOB experience
1 comments
SV_BubbleTime 1761 days ago
I’m familiar with the concept of action frames; but not public action frames. How does this get the device online instantly?

I had assumed they used BLE to bridge MQTT via the phone while their App was connected.

link
FerdSlav 1760 days ago
PAF can be thought of as basically a broadcast message to any and all WiFi devices in the area, regardless of if they are connected to the same access point or IP network. In the case of someone like Amazon, a device when it is first powered on can broadcast out looking for other Amazon WiFi devices in the home and receive the credentials from them.
link
SV_BubbleTime 1760 days ago
>a device when it is first powered on can broadcast out looking for other Amazon WiFi devices in the home and receive the credentials from them.

Ah! That explains it. I was going to be really skeptical that other people's wifi endpoints would "help out" foreign devices, but this makes more sense.

link