Understanding HA's Matter Server network mesh

Sourcer63 · February 1, 2026, 8:31am

Hello,

My Matter/OTBR setup is perfectly running.

Today I discovered HA’s Thread network display. Very interesting and helpful as well. Two questions for my understanding:

The “?” in the two blocks are referencing the same nodes respectively as the router device, an Eve Energy smart plug in both cases. Shouldn’t there be just one device instead of the various “?” which would be kind of linking to itself?
HA/ZBT1 acts as the main central hub, yet it is showing as “Unknown (C494161B)”. Given that the Matter server is running on HA itself I would have thought it is recognized with a name.

koying · February 1, 2026, 1:22pm

Heh, would be interested to know where that is

WallyR · February 1, 2026, 1:27pm

It is the Web interface of the OTBR addon.
It is disabled in the network settings of the addon per default and you need to enable both ports for it to work.

Edit: I thought it was that web page, but it does not look like that picture. Maybe it is the new Beta OTBR.

koying · February 1, 2026, 1:31pm

That’s the topology view in the addon, and it doesn’t look the same

That one is basically useless (you cannot match a node to a device unless you go digging into the Thread adresses), so if HA came up with an actual HA centric topology view, I’m all ears

Sourcer63 · February 1, 2026, 1:41pm

I believe that the view came with the new Matter Server 8.2.2 where you should activate the beta for Matter.js to be used. This works nicely and the discovery and update process of devices seem to run better than with the old version.

I didn’t dare to update to Thread 1.4 though.

wmaker · February 1, 2026, 6:37pm

Yes the map is available in the Matter Server Addon when in Beta mode which runs the new Matter.js code.

I have a similar situation with the (?) nodes, and what I think is happening is that certain manufacturer’s devices will use one MAC address for use with Thread tables, and another MAC address for use with Matter Server. I believe the Matter devices provide Thread information via Matter Clusters to the Matter Server and that is what the server is using to generate the topology map. The (?) devices are coming from the Thread tables with a MAC address that the Matter Server doesn’t know anything about, nor how to correlate it.

A related situation with Thread Border routers… the Matter Server doesn’t know anything about them other than they are showing up in Thread tables.

Sourcer63 · February 1, 2026, 7:03pm

In my case all “?” that surround the central Eve Energy plug routing device stem from the very SAME Eve plug. So that’s 8 “?” with identical node numbers where there is just one single physical device.

wmaker · February 1, 2026, 7:14pm

I believe the (?) devices are end-devices (battery), so it could be something else.

WallyR · February 2, 2026, 4:12am

My Matter server complains about no listenaddr for web interface.
I have run the standard addon in HAOS and have not made any special configuration for it, so no idea what is the issue.

Sourcer63 · February 2, 2026, 7:56am

My HA runs in a VM as HAOS as well, so basically the same situation. Upgrade to the latest version and switch on the beta.

WallyR · February 3, 2026, 5:45am

I have the latest version, but when I activate the Beta switch and restart the addon, then it fails with “no listenaddr for WEB” and defaults then to binding to 127.0.0.1.

Seems like there already is opened an issue for it.

github.com/home-assistant/addons

OTBR beta - otbr-web not accessible

opened 07:21PM - 02 Feb 26 UTC

PaulVMo

### Describe the issue you are experiencing Unable to access the otbw-web app w…hen running beta version of OTBR. It looks like it is listening on the loopback interface only thus it is not accessible. In the stable version, the same works. ``` [12:59:53] INFO: Starting otbr-web... [INFO]-WEB-----: Running 0.3.0-624a7d98 listenAddr not specified, using default 127.0.0.1 ``` ### What type of installation are you running? Home Assistant OS ### Which operating system are you running on? Home Assistant Operating System ### Which app are you reporting an issue with? OpenThread Border Router ### What is the version of the app? 2.16.0 ### Steps to reproduce the issue 1. In the OpenThread Border Router app configuration, enable Beta and set the OpenThread Web port (e.g., 8080) 2. Restart the app 3. Attempt to navigate to the web UI http://<home assistant IP>:8080 and browser has ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED ### System Health information ## System Information version | core-2026.1.3 -- | -- installation_type | Home Assistant OS dev | false hassio | true docker | true container_arch | amd64 user | root virtualenv | false python_version | 3.13.11 os_name | Linux os_version | 6.12.63-haos arch | x86_64 timezone | America/Chicago config_dir | /config <details><summary>Home Assistant Cloud</summary> logged_in | false -- | -- can_reach_cert_server | ok can_reach_cloud_auth | ok can_reach_cloud | ok </details> <details><summary>Home Assistant Supervisor</summary> host_os | Home Assistant OS 17.0 -- | -- update_channel | stable supervisor_version | supervisor-2026.01.1 agent_version | 1.8.1 docker_version | 29.1.3 disk_total | 48.5 GB disk_used | 19.0 GB nameservers | 10.0.30.6, 10.0.30.5 healthy | true supported | true host_connectivity | true supervisor_connectivity | true ntp_synchronized | true virtualization | kvm board | ova supervisor_api | ok version_api | ok installed_addons | Matter Server (8.2.2), File editor (5.8.0), Whisper (3.1.0), Piper (2.1.1), OpenThread Border Router (2.16.0) </details> <details><summary>Universal Devices ISY/IoX</summary> host_reachable | ok -- | -- device_connected | true last_heartbeat | February 2, 2026 at 1:20 PM websocket_status | connected </details> <details><summary>Dashboards</summary> dashboards | 5 -- | -- resources | 0 views | 9 mode | storage </details> <details><summary>Network Configuration</summary> adapters | lo (disabled), enp0s18 (enabled, default, auto), docker0 (disabled), hassio (disabled), vethb5013b2 (disabled), veth0d153eb (disabled), veth4ff02bf (disabled), veth23def91 (disabled), veth22f98b8 (disabled), veth66f838f (disabled), wpan0 (disabled), veth16816fc (disabled), veth37dda49 (disabled), vethdd1ed83 (disabled) -- | -- ipv4_addresses | lo (127.0.0.1/8), enp0s18 (10.0.30.10/24), docker0 (172.30.232.1/23), hassio (172.30.32.1/23), vethb5013b2 (), veth0d153eb (), veth4ff02bf (), veth23def91 (), veth22f98b8 (), veth66f838f (), wpan0 (), veth16816fc (), veth37dda49 (), vethdd1ed83 () ipv6_addresses | lo (::1/128), enp0s18 (fd4d:21f5:cc2c:9c7b:5a24:754:a3ce:4f54/64, fe80::3af4:6808:9c5a:e661/64), docker0 (fe80::84e:2cff:fe6f:e351/64), hassio (fe80::fc59:7fff:feeb:6cf7/64), vethb5013b2 (fe80::6cde:58ff:feea:98e1/64), veth0d153eb (fe80::b8e6:11ff:fe59:92da/64), veth4ff02bf (fe80::2878:97ff:fe38:f05b/64), veth23def91 (fe80::c40f:eff:fe1f:bafb/64), veth22f98b8 (fe80::e2:daff:fe28:2d99/64), veth66f838f (fe80::ccb0:3aff:fe04:b6a/64), wpan0 (fd76:80d:51f3:2279:0:ff:fe00:fc11/64, fd48:1169:d4c9:1:e008:be47:2991:67f2/64, fd76:80d:51f3:2279:0:ff:fe00:fc38/64, fd76:80d:51f3:2279:0:ff:fe00:fc10/64, fd76:80d:51f3:2279:0:ff:fe00:e400/64, fd76:80d:51f3:2279:99fc:66fa:ef6b:6755/64, fe80::8d5:9c6e:305f:d306/64), veth16816fc (fe80::f02d:88ff:fee1:5cfd/64), veth37dda49 (fe80::98ac:f4ff:fee6:809f/64), vethdd1ed83 (fe80::10ab:27ff:fe1c:389b/64) announce_addresses | 10.0.30.10, fd4d:21f5:cc2c:9c7b:5a24:754:a3ce:4f54, fe80::3af4:6808:9c5a:e661 </details> <details><summary>Recorder</summary> oldest_recorder_run | January 12, 2026 at 1:58 PM -- | -- current_recorder_run | February 1, 2026 at 8:55 AM estimated_db_size | 1515.95 MiB database_engine | sqlite database_version | 3.49.2 </details> ### Anything in the Supervisor logs that might be useful for us? ```txt no ``` ### Anything in the app logs that might be useful for us? ```txt [12:59:53] INFO: Starting otbr-web... [INFO]-WEB-----: Running 0.3.0-624a7d98 listenAddr not specified, using default 127.0.0.1 ``` ### Additional information _No response_

Sourcer63 · February 3, 2026, 9:04am

That might be linked to your OBTR version. I still run 2.15.3. 2.16.0 is reported to have issues.

WallyR · February 3, 2026, 12:59pm

Yeah, I run 2.16.0.
It will just wait for the next release.

Sourcer63 · February 4, 2026, 10:56am

I upgraded to OBTR 2.16.1 and activated the beta. All was working well.

However, the “?” (see the first post i this thread) remained, so I thought I might be playing a little bit and re-interviewed the two Eve plugs that act as additional routers. Not a good idea - the result was that I suddenly had two meshes. One with the two Eve plugs, of which one was “Leader”, and a second and unconnected one, which was the main HA. Both meshes were still actionable from HA, but the key and TLV of the OTBR in HA had disappeared.

Fortunately I had created a snapshot of my installation just prior upgrading OTBR and rolled back to it, successfully restoring the previous Matter/Thread mesh setup.

I am now wondering what happened. Re-interviewing an existing node in Matter opens a dialogue box “Are you sure?”. But admittedly, I shouldn’t do things that I don’t fully understand.