MQTT — What Is It? Why Is It So Important in The Internet of Things?

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a collection of technologies that allow common devices to be connected to the Internet. Achieving this aim necessitates the ability to transfer information between devices, which is the fundamental function of the Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol; let’s learn more about this critical idea in IoT.

MQTT is a lightweight and simple communication protocol that can be utilized in microcontrollers, with low hardware resources, or when there is little bandwidth available. As a result, it is well suited to the Internet of Things scenario, in which a collection of ordinary things that do not require enormous processing power may efficiently connect to the Internet, either to monitor or to perform a specific activity.

Dr. Andy Stanford-Clark and Allen Nipper developed it in 1999 to monitor SCADA industrial control systems, and it was later released as an OASIS open standard. Despite its extensive history, it did not recover prominence until the introduction of the Internet of Things sector.

The protocol has a simple design, with various terminology that help us visualize the operation and communication channel via MQTT

Broker: A server that acts as a platform for the exchange of communications between devices

Client: Any device that is linked to the broker and may post and subscribe to topics

Topic: Clients publish and subscribe to topics, which is the message route

Publish: The act of delivering information to a certain topic

Subscribe: The act of subscribing to a topic in order to get information as it becomes available.

MQTT is a standard that ensures secure communication due to TLS encryption and delivery dependability due to a QoS quality of service that informs whether the message was successfully received. It also enables bidirectional communication between devices and servers. As a result of these factors, it has emerged as the ideal option for developing device control and monitoring systems for the Internet of Things.

Future of MQTT

According to Google Trends, interest in MQTT has doubled globally during the last five years. The rapid growth of the Internet of Things industry, as well as a constant preference for simplicity and resource efficiency, promote this trend.

The MQTT protocol for Internet of Things will continue to be popular because to its simple design, ease of implementation, dependable message delivery, and high scalability.

In March 2019, OASIS announced MQTT 5.0, the most recent version of the protocol. Message expiration, pooled subscription, and topic alias are new features in v5.0. They improved MQTT performance and made it more appealing to Internet of Things developers.

Winding Up

MQTT is a strong contender in data transmission and network communication, and for the Internet of Things, yet it is not the best in every category.

MQTT, on the other hand, offers numerous major advantages to its users:

• reliability
• quick response time
• the capacity to support a limitless number of devices
• publish/subscribe messaging, which is ideal for many-to-many communication
• MQTT protocol implementation is made easier by enough documentation and a large developer community

All of these makes MQTT an ideal choice for your IoT device and for the creation of Internet of Things solutions.