  Several networking technologies targeting the IoT application space currently
compete within the smart city domain, both in outdoor and indoor deployments.
However, up till now, there is no clear winner, and results from real-world
deployments have only recently started to surface. In this paper, we present a
comparative study of 2 popular IoT networking technologies, LoRa and IEEE
802.15.4, within the context of a research-oriented IoT deployment inside
school buildings in Europe, targeting energy efficiency in education. We
evaluate the actual performance of these two technologies in real-world
settings, presenting a comparative study on the effect of parameters like the
built environment, network quality, or data rate. Our results indicate that
both technologies have their advantages, and while in certain cases both are
perfectly adequate, in our use case LoRa exhibits a more robust behavior.
Moreover, LoRa's characteristics make it a very good choice for indoor IoT
deployments such as in educational buildings, and especially in cases where
there are low bandwidth requirements.
