MQTT

We are now in the fourth generation industrial revolution.  

  1. 1760s - Adoption of steam and water power, mechanized production.
  2. 1870s - Electricity was implemented - telegraph, telephone, internal combusion engine.
  3. 1950s - Processing power of the computer, automation, digital electronics, productivity tools.
  4. 2010s - Networking, Internet of Things (IOT), 3D printing, biotechnology.

The MQTT broker is a radical change in how computers systems, PLC's, databases, etc communicate with each other.  MQTT implements a publish/subscribe methodology where clients both publish information to the MQTT broker and subscribe to information from the broker.  Publishing clients do not need to know about and don't care about subscribers to the information.  Likewise subscribers do not care who published the information.  This separates the input from the output.  There is no direct communication between 2 clients.  

All clients have to do is connect to the broker and the broker handles everything from there - security, permissions, routing, redundancy, etc.

From the mqtt.com website:

MQTT is an OASIS standard messaging protocol for the Internet of Things (IoT). It is designed as an extremely lightweight publish/subscribe messaging transport that is ideal for connecting remote devices with a small code footprint and minimal network bandwidth. MQTT today is used in a wide variety of industries, such as automotive, manufacturing, telecommunications, oil and gas, etc.

Benefits

MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport) is a lightweight messaging protocol designed for constrained devices and low-bandwidth, high-latency, or unreliable networks. Here are several benefits to using MQTT:

  • Lightweight: MQTT is designed to be lightweight and efficient, making it suitable for use in environments with limited resources, such as IoT devices and networks.
  • Bandwidth Efficiency: It uses a publish/subscribe messaging model, which reduces the amount of data transmitted over the network compared to traditional client-server models, leading to improved bandwidth efficiency.
  • Asynchronous Communication: MQTT facilitates asynchronous communication between clients, allowing devices to communicate with each other without the need for continuous connections, thus saving power and reducing latency.
  • Scalability: MQTT supports a large number of clients, enabling scalable solutions for various applications ranging from small-scale to enterprise-level deployments.
  • Reliability: It provides mechanisms for reliable message delivery, including quality of service (QoS) levels, ensuring that messages are delivered reliably even in the presence of network disruptions or client failures.
  • Flexibility: MQTT supports various messaging patterns, including one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many communication, offering flexibility in designing communication architectures.
  • Security: MQTT supports authentication and encryption mechanisms, including TLS/SSL, username/password authentication, and access control lists (ACLs), ensuring secure communication between clients and brokers.
  • Decoupling: The publish/subscribe model employed by MQTT allows for decoupling of producers and consumers, enabling loosely coupled architectures where devices can communicate without direct knowledge of each other.
  • Reliable Message Queuing: MQTT brokers can store and queue messages for clients that are offline or unreachable, ensuring that messages are delivered once the client becomes available, thus providing reliable message queuing capabilities.
  • Interoperability: MQTT is an open standard protocol with implementations available in various programming languages and platforms, facilitating interoperability and integration with existing systems and devices.

Overall, MQTT offers a range of benefits that make it well-suited for IoT, telemetry, and messaging applications in various industries.