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What is an OUI?

Each LoRaWAN Network Server (LNS) on the Helium Network acquires an Organizationally Unique Identifier (OUI). This registers the LNS with the blockchain and allocates two very important routing objects owned and maintained by the OUI operator:

  • up to five filters, describing the sets (AppEUI, DevEUI) expected by the LNS
  • one or more slabs of DevAddrs, reserving an address space for the OUI's devices on the Helium Network

A device, defined by (AppEui, DevEui), can be allocated any of the DevAddrs owned by the OUI. It is even possible to multiplex many devices on the same DevAddr at the same time, using the Message Integrity Check (MIC) to disambiguate.

OUI Cost

The OUI is purchased with data credits (DC). Costs are subject to change, but currently the OUI itself costs $100 worth of DCs and each DevAddr cost an additional $100 in DC.

DevAddr are sold in sequential blocks between 8 and 65,536 and any power of two. You must purchase a slab when purchasing an OUI, therefore, the minimum cost for an OUI is $800 for eight DevAddr's and $100 for the OUI itself.

info

It is possible to have many devices share the same DevAddr, so even with just an eight address slab, potentially hundreds of devices may be hosted.

This is done by using the Data frames Message Integrity Check (MIC) to figure out which DevAddr session of many actually sent that packet. Router implements this special logic.

The OUI purchase transaction itself incurs a fee based as does any other blockchain transaction; generally this will be $0.35-1.00 worth of DCs based on how the fields get filled and change the transaction size.

Purchase Transaction

You need the Helium wallet to go any further. You'll want to create a wallet and to have at least $900 in HNT (base on current HNT Oracle pricing).

Purchase the OUI

Submit a "create OUI" transaction:

./helium-wallet oui create --subnet-size 8 --filter wVwCiewtCpEKAAAAAAAAAAAAcCK3fwAAAAAAAAAAAABI7IQOAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQAAADBlAAAAAAAAAAAAADEAAAA2AAAAOgAAAA

The filter is a dummy filter to initialize the OUI. When you get Console running, it will automatically maintain it. You can once again track the transaction with the endpoint above. When it is complete, you should also see your OUI as the most recently purchased and on the list here.

Congratulations! You are the proud owner of a Helium Network OUI. OUIs are numbered sequentially, so the lower you are, the earlier you were on the Network!.

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