After the ChirpStack Network Server installation, we will see a second LoRaWAN server called the Things 1
Stack. 2
It's exactly the one we've used at the beginning of this course. 3
When we use The Things Network, we use The Things Stack. 4
Actually, there are many versions of The Things Stack, but they all use the same software. 5
The Things Stack Community is the one we've used. 6
The common name for this edition is the Thing Network. 7
The Things Stack Cloud is the commercial edition. 8
Of course you will have to pay subscription fees to use it, but if we want we can install The Things 9
Stack on our own server for free. 10
This is called The Things Stack Open Source. 11
All these editions are actually based on the same open source software and the source code is available 12
on GitHub. 13
But like all Lorawan architecture, there will be a Network Server for authentication and an Application 14
Server for the encryption. 15
We've seen this architecture many times already in this course. 16
When we installed ChirpStack in the previous video, we saw a new service in front of the Network Server 17
called Gateway Bridge. 18
We have exactly the same service in The Things Stack, but here it's called Gateway Server. 19
You can go to the previous video to understand the role of this service, but if you want a little reminder, 20
we just need to know that the gateway server is here to keep alive the communication with gateways. 21
So the gateway server knows all packets forwarder used by The Things Stack. On the other side, the Network 22
Server will only focus on the loRaWAN stack. 23
Finally, on the right we have multiple interfaces with the Iot platforms and user applications. 24
In The Things Stack we'll one more time find the MQTT or HTTP protocols. 25
Okay, so now in the next video we'll see how to install The Things Stack on our own server.