LON is a trademark which stands for Local Operating Network. LonWorks is a building automation protocol created by Eclelon Corporation in 1989. The two most commonly used physical layers are “Free Topology” which is a 78K baud twisted pair, and LonWorks IP tunneling over Ethernet. The protocol is now known as the standard ISO/IEC 14908.

LonWorks is a peer-to-peer network, meaning there is no single master on the network. Control devices are free to communicate directly with each other, avoiding some of the problems that can occur if a single master fails. Addressing is most often made known to all devices on the network through a process known as “binding”, and this process is carried out at network commissioning time using a network management tool such as Echelon’s LonMaker.