The Node Reset Procedure is the way to remove a node from a network, which is like the node leaves the network actively. It's different from blacklisting which is the way to move all un-blacklisted nodes to the new network, so the node is left passively. Below table gives a simple comparison between these 2 methods to remove node(s) from network.

The node reset procedure includes below 2 messages:

• Config Node Reset - sent by the provisioner to ask the node to remove itself from the network.
• Config Node Reset Status - sent by the node to acknowledge the node has received the Config Node Reset message.

In general, how the node reset procedure looks like in the ideal situation is like figure 1 shows.

Figure 1

Given that the wireless communication can be affected by many environment factors, especially the packet collision, which results in certain packet cannot be received by the receiving device. Typically, the wireless protocols have a proper way to know the situation happens, then they can just retry sending the missing packets. However, for this procedure, because the node needs to remove itself from the network after sending the Config Node Reset Status message, it won't be able to communicate with the provisioner any more. Let's imagine what happens if either of those 2 packets is missing by the target device.

Figure 2 shows that if the node misses some of the Config Node Reset message.

Figure 2

From the figure you can see, the provisioner sends Config Node Reset then waits for the acknowledgement - the Config Node Reset Status message from the Node, whereas the node doesn't receive the Config Node Reset message successfully, which means the node will never send the acknowledgement. There is a predefined waiting time on the provisioner side, so the provisioner will get the timeout event after the predefined time, then it can retry sending the Config Node Reset message until the acknowledgement is received or it fails for a certain amount of times. In this case, only the user experience will be affected since the time for the procedure increases dramatically becauses of the timeouts.

Figure 3 shows that if the provisioner misses the Config Node Reset Status message.

Figure 3

From the figure you can see, the node receives the Config Node Reset message from the provisioner and acknowledges with the Config Node Reset Status message, then removes itself from the network. However, the message is missed by the provisioner, which means the real node status is uncertain to the provisioner since it doesn't know if the Config Node Reset message is received by the node or not. In this case, the situation is not recoverable, consider:

• No matter how many times the provisioner retries sending the Config Node Reset message, the node will not be able receive anymore because it has already removed itself from the network.
• The node will also never be able to send the Config Node Reset Status message, the reason is the same as above.

Actually, the figure 3 is still idealised. In practice, the provisioner won't know the status of the node before it successfully receives the Config Node Reset Status. So, this brings some problems:

1. It's not easy for the provisioner to decide when to stop retrying sending the Config Node Reset message. Apparently, it would be a deadloop for the provisioner to send Config Node Reset forever if the situation in figure 3 happens without specifying the times.
2. The real status of the node is unknown to the provisioner during this procedure, it could either be 1> the node doesn't receive any of the Config Node Reset messages, the node stay provisioned, or 2> the Config Node Reset Status missed by the provisioner. In both cases, there is no solid indication that the provisioner is OK to remove the node from device database. Below is a table to the cases mentioned above.

Conclusion

All in all, the conclusion is The Node Reset Procedure is UNRELIABLE without any other means of determining the real status of the node.

Ideas

From the above description, the most important thing for this procedure to finish properly is that the provisioner receiving the Config Node Reset Status message successfully. So, to improve the performance, you could try to increase the network retransmission. This can be done temporarily before the node reset procedure, e.g. normally, the network retransmission count is disabled or configured to be a low value. When the provisioner wants to remove the node, it could firstly configure a high network retransmission to the node then start the node reset procedure. See figure 4.

Figure 4

But this is just a way to improve the performance, it doesn't make the procedure to be reliable. Application developers should take this into account if it's desired to make it reliable. For example, based on the assumption that the unprovisioned device will always send unprovisioned device beacon, the provisioner can scan for the unprovisioned device beacon to know if the device is already in unprovisioned state before removes the node from database.