Help understanding matter integration

Configuration Matter/Thread
1

I’m a long time SmartThings user, recently transplanted to HA. I’m also an equally long Google Assistant user. I’ve got everything integrated and things are all working fine, but I just can’t for the life of me wrap around how Matter plays into this.

I’ve got the Matter integration in Home Assistant. I know Google Home also uses Matter. I know I need one primary device to act as a border router, but I can’t figure out how to know which devices is doing that? I have probably 8 or 9 Google Nest devices and as I understand it, all of them can be a border router. I recently added a Nest Gen 4 thermostat in in the settings, it shows a "Linked Matter Apps & Services and I’m pretty sure it was added to my Google Home ecosystem as a Matter device, but I’m not sure.

Everything is working as I would expect it, but I would at least like to understand what was going on and more specifically. It’s like my whole Matter ecosystem is in a black box and I don’t like that. I’d also like HA to be my Matter border router, but I don’t know how to go about that? Seems like something else is, I just don’t know what.

Any help would be appreciated

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I think this is the source of the confusion, there’s no such thing as a Matter border router.

Each platform needs its own Matter controller to be able to talk to Matter devices. When you use HA to control Matter devices, you’re using your HA instance as Matter controller. When you use Google Home you’re using one of their speakers / displays as controller (which one is up to Google), when you use SmartThings you’re using the ST hub as controller. Thanks to Matter multi-admin, multiple platforms (controllers) can talk to Matter devices.

The border router thing is a Thread concept, only applies for devices that use Thread radio instead of WiFi. Since Thread is a wireless mesh network and the roles of the nodes are automatic so there’s no manual setup work in case of issues, you don’t really pick a primary Thread border router, you just pick your preferred network and the network will see who is the best border router available in case there are many.

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