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MQTT Essentials - All Core Concepts Explained

  • Posted by Andrew Paul November 24, 2022 Filed in Technology #MQTT  100 views
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    If you're interested in learning more about MQTT, then you've come to the right place. In this MQTT Essentials guide, we'll walk through all of the core concepts of this protocol and help you understand it. We'll also discuss the benefits of using this protocol and some of its applications.

    What Is MQTT ?

    MQTT is a messaging protocol that can be used in various applications. The protocol uses a message called a topic. Anyone who wants to receive the message must subscribe to the topic. Messages that are sent without any subscribers are rejected by brokers. The protocol is intended to be used in machine-to-machine communications.

    MQTT is used in industrial and manufacturing applications to connect various devices. Its main advantage is the fact that it allows fast data transfer, with minimal data overhead. In addition, it is compatible with cloud services. Industrial edge gateways use this protocol to connect devices and deliver real-time data to a data center.

    MQTT originated as a proprietary protocol for communicating with SCADA systems, and has since evolved to be used in a variety of industries. Unlike traditional protocols, MQTT doesn't allow direct communication between subscribers and publishers. Rather, the MQTT protocol requires that the intended users subscribe to the topic in order to receive the message.

    Understanding MQTT

    If you're just getting started with MQTT, this course will help you understand the basics and get up to speed with the protocol. The core concepts of MQTT include topics, subscription groups, and the expiry of messages. A shared subscription group lets more than one MQTT client share one subscription to balance the message load for a single topic. This open-source software specification is designed to help the manufacturing industry integrate data.

    MQTT is an open-source protocol that was designed for IoT use cases, such as a secure communication system. But it has some limitations. It can be less reliable than other protocols and has less interoperability. It is also not very secure, and has few authentication features. Passwords and usernames are sent in cleartext. To protect your data, you'll need to secure your MQTT messages using SSL/TLS.

     

     

    Final Thoughts

    The MQTT protocol aims to provide resource-constrained communication between IoT devices. While it can be secure with SSL/TLS, some security risks arise when the protocol is not implemented as intended. To mitigate such issues, authentication is provided in cleartext as part of the CONNECT/CONNACK packet sequence. This is not a lightweight security solution, and therefore may not be suitable for all applications.

    This protocol has a variety of applications, including sending configuration data to devices or pushing out OTA updates to all devices. It is also used in cloud-native microservices and embedded systems. Facebook, for example, has integrated MQTT into its Messenger application. Numerous other open-source messaging applications are also built on the protocol.

    MQTT is especially useful for IoT and home automation projects. It can be implemented on low-cost development boards, including the Raspberry Pi. These boards come with an ESP8266 or ESP32 processor, which support the MQTT protocol. They also support Node-RED, a Home Automation Platform that uses MQTT. These platforms allow you to connect sensors to your home, build interactive dashboards, and monitor their results.