MQTT stands for Message Queuing Telemetry Transport. It is a lightweight messaging protocol designed for machine-to-machine (M2M) communication and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. MQTT enables devices to communicate with each other by publishing and subscribing to topics, which are like channels or categories of data.
MQTT is based on a publish/subscribe architecture, where publishers send messages to a broker that receives and distributes those messages to all subscribers who have subscribed to the same topic. This makes it a highly scalable and efficient way of transmitting data between devices.
Some key features of MQTT include:
- Small footprint: MQTT was designed with low-bandwidth and low-power devices in mind, making it ideal for IoT applications.
- QoS levels: MQTT supports three levels of Quality of Service (QoS) – 0, 1, and 2 – which allows for different levels of reliability depending on the application’s needs.
- Retained messages: MQTT brokers can retain the last message published on a given topic so that new subscribers can receive the latest information even if they weren’t subscribed at the time the message was sent.
- Security: MQTT supports TLS encryption for secure communication between devices.
Overall, MQTT is a versatile protocol that has become widely adopted in the IoT space due to its simplicity, efficiency, and scalability.
