All Packet Broker services will be requiring a new OAuth 2.0 token format presented by the client. The new token format includes an audience that needs to match the host name of the service.

Services using Packet Broker, including The Things Stack from version 3.15.2, will support this.

The Things Stack Cloud and The Things Stack Community Edition will be upgraded end of October according to schedule.

We advise customers using The Things Stack Enterprise and Open Source in combination with Packet Broker to upgrade to 3.15.2 shortly after its release.

This maintenance is not a security fix, but rather a preparation to use Packet Broker tokens more widely in third-party services. Including an audience in the security token allows services to verify that the token is intended for that service, and avoids third-party services to use the received token on other services. See https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7519 for more information.
Posted on Oct 2, 21:00 CEST

We will be updating Packet Broker so use a new device activation flow. This device activation looks up the Home Network of the device based on the LoRaWAN JoinEUI (a.k.a. AppEUI) and DevEUI.

Impact for users:
- The Things Stack Cloud and The Things Stack Community Edition: no impact
- The Things Stack Enterprise: upgrade to version 3.16.0 or higher and contact The Things Industries support to register your deployment as Join Server
- The Things Stack Open Source: upgrade to version 3.16.0 or higher and contact join@packetbroker.net to register your deployment as Join Server
- Other LoRaWAN Network Server users: no impact, but you can now register your Join Server with Packet Broker if you use one or more. Please contact join@packetbroker.net to register Join Servers

Currently, Packet Broker routes LoRaWAN join-requests to potentially many Home Networks. This is not scalable as the number of Home Networks increase. Therefore, we disabled device activations to newly onboarded Home Networks for performance reasons.

This update allows device activations with all Home Networks, providing that Packet Broker can lookup the Home Network. In the LoRaWAN ecosystem, this lookup should be provided by a Join Server through LoRaWAN Backend Interfaces. Packet Broker now supports this lookup with LoRaWAN Backend Interfaces 1.0 and 1.1. Join Servers must be registered at Packet Broker for this lookup, and hence device activations, to work.
Posted on Nov 12, 14:56 CET