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MQTT: An Intro to the IoT Messaging Protocol | Part 1

Introduction to MQTT

“MQTT is a Client Server publish/subscribe messaging transport protocol. It is light weight, open, simple, and designed so as to be easy to implement. These characteristics make it ideal for use in many situations, including constrained environments such as for communication in Machine to Machine (M2M) and Internet of Things (IoT) contexts where a small code footprint is required and/or network bandwidth is at a premium.“ -- Citation from the official MQTT 3.1.1 specification.

The abstract of the MQTT specification does a good job describing what MQTT is all about. It is a very light weight and binary protocol, and due to its minimal packet overhead, MQTT excels when transferring data over the wire in comparison to protocols like HTTP. Another important aspect of the protocol is that MQTT is extremely easy to implement on the client side. Ease of use was a key concern in the development of MQTT and makes it a perfect fit for constrained devices with limited resources today.

Watch this video to understand the main features and characteristics of the MQTT protocol.

Read the next post of this series, which introduces the publish and subscribe pattern and the differences between MQTT and a message queue.

Click here to read the original post.

Get your copy of MQTT Essentials eBook to understand the protocol in detail without having to read the entire specification.

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