by Exosite, on April 7, 2016
Each IoT solution is slightly different from another and with numerous choices to be made it can be difficult knowing which options will fit your solution best. As you design your IoT strategy, choosing the correct protocols will be an intricate part of your solution's success or failure. In this week's segment of our Embedded IoT Protocols white paper, written by Patrick Barrett, we will look at a new protocol, MQTT.
MQTT BREAKDOWN
MQTT is a publish/subscribe messaging protocol designed to be very simple and easy to implement. The protocol was originally developed by IBM, although control was recently given to the OASIS consortium. The MQTT protocol specification is relatively short and written in a way that makes it easily understood. Someone relatively technical can read the whole protocol specification in a day or two and possibly even implement it in under a week.
However, this brevity of the specification can also be challenging. Some areas are too ambiguous and generally lacking in basic features that would be beneficial in real-world IoT product deployments. A major pain point of MQTT is the absence of useful error-handling. Most error conditions are handled by simply disconnecting the TCP session without any indication about why it happens.
