Zigbee binding
Zigbee binding links two devices directly — a remote to a bulb, a switch to a plug — so commands flow device-to-device without passing through the coordinator. Bound devices keep working even if the hub is down, with none of the latency of a hub round-trip.
A binding is an entry in a device’s binding table telling it where to send its commands: the remote’s on/off cluster is pointed at the bulb (or at a group address covering several bulbs) instead of at the coordinator. The result is instant, hub-independent control — the closest thing in the smart home to the reliability of a dumb wall switch.
The trade-off is that the hub may not learn about bound-command state changes unless devices also report state, and setting bindings up requires a platform that exposes them — Zigbee2MQTT and ZHA both do, with per-cluster control; consumer hubs mostly hide the feature or use it silently (Hue dimmer kits and IKEA remote-plus-bulb pairs are factory-configured bindings).