A general question regarding Matter over Wi-Fi

[pabl40]

I am new to Matter development and still trying to understand how Matter over Wi-Fi works exactly.

Let's say we have a simple Matter light device. We commission this device over BLE to connect to a local Wi-Fi network. This device then gets assigned a local IP address.

If I use a matter controller such as chip-tool for testing on a PC to communicate with this device to turn on and off the light and change brightness etc., does the communication go through the Wi-Fi router of the local network still like how normal Wi-Fi devices communicate? Or is it just just Matter controller -> Matter device?

I am reading conflicting information online about this. If we have multiple Matter devices on the network commissioned to work over Wi-Fi, does the communication go from the controller (for example chip-tool) through the Wi-Fi router for every device? Or simply from the controller to the device. If the latter, why does every commissioned device on a Matter / Wi-Fi network get assigned a local IP address? Thanks in advance.

[liaifat85]

For Matter over Wi-Fi, the communication between the controller (chip-tool) and the devices indeed goes through the local Wi-Fi router, utilizing the assigned local IP addresses for routing within the local network.

[pabl40]

For Matter over Wi-Fi, the communication between the controller (chip-tool) and the devices indeed goes through the local Wi-Fi router, utilizing the assigned local IP addresses for routing within the local network.

Thank you for the reply. In that case, why do I read about Matter having direct device-to-device communication without the need for a hub? Like in this video from around 35 mins : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN-JIiLAbRI