Glossary

BACnet

BACnet (Building Automation and Control Network) is the global data communications standard for building automation and control networks. It provides a vendor-independent networking solution to enable interoperability among equipment and control devices for a wide range of building automation applications. BACnet enables interoperability by defining communications messages, formats and rules for exchanging data, commands, and status information. BACnet provides the data communications infrastructure for intelligent buildings and is implemented in hundreds of thousands of buildings around the world.

The BACnet standard was developed and is continuously maintained by the BACnet Committee, more formally known as SSPC 135 (a Standing Standards Project Committee) of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE).

BACnet is an ISO standard (EN ISO 16484-5), a European standard (DIN EN ISO 16484-5:2017-12) and a national standard in many countries.

BACnet device

Any device, real or virtual, that supports digital communication using the BACnet protocol.

BACnet network

A network of BACnet devices that share the MAC or VMAC address space under a particular BACnet network number.

BACnet internetwork

A set of two or more networks interconnected by BACnet routers. In a BACnet internetwork interconnected by BACnet routers, there exists exactly one message path between any two nodes.

BACnet Device

Any device, real or virtual, that supports digital communication using the BACnet protocol.

ephemeral port

An ephemeral port is a communications endpoint (port) of a transport layer protocol of the Internet protocol suite that is used for only a short period of time for the duration of a communication session. Such short-lived ports are allocated automatically within a predefined range of port numbers by the IP stack software of a computer operating system. Wikipedia

upstream

Something going up a stack from a server to client.

downstream

Something going down a stack from a client to a server.

stack

A sequence of communication objects organized in a semi-linear sequence from the application layer at the top to the physical networking layer(s) at the bottom.

discoverable

Something that can be determined using a combination of BACnet objects, properties and services. For example, discovering the network topology by using Who-Is-Router-To-Network, or knowing what objects are defined in a device by reading the object-list property.