San Jose, Calif.-based LonMark International, a non-profit, member-driven standards development and industry trade association supporting the LonWorks control-networking technologies, recently announced that the voting members of the Joint Technical Committee (JTC) of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), Geneva, and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), Geneva, have formally approved LonWorks control networking technology as ISO/IEC 14908, Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4. The four parts of the standard set comprise the core protocol: the twisted-pair; free-topology-wiring transfer medium; the powerline transfer medium; and the use of the Internet Protocol (IP) as a tunneling transfer medium.
First introduced in 1990, the LonWorks control networking technology has been a worldwide-embraced technology for control communications and has held European, American, and Chinese national standards designations for several years. Now ISO/IEC have approved the standard to the highest level of international standards recognition. This ratification will enhance the adoption and usage of this technology within the worldwide controls market and specifically in the buildings vertical. Although LonWorks is also used in many other markets, such as outdoor lighting, transportation, utility, process control, and home automation, the majority of the more than 100 million installed devices have been installed in or around buildings projects.