MQTT is a standard protocol for IoT message transmission, which uses an extremely lightweight publish-subscribe message model to connect IoT devices in a scalable, reliable and efficient manner.
More than twenty years have passed since IBM released MQTT in 1999, and ten years have passed since EMQ released the open source MQTT message server EMQX on GitHub in 2012 . Now, we have come to 2023, when various emerging technologies are advancing rapidly. With the growing use of MQTT in the Internet of Things and more diverse scenarios, we can foresee the following seven development trends in the field of MQTT technology.
MQTT over QUIC
QUIC (Quick UDP Internet Connections) is a new transport protocol developed by Google that runs on UDP and aims to reduce the delay caused by establishing a new connection, increase the data transmission rate, and solve some limitations of TCP.
The next-generation Internet protocol HTTP/3 uses QUIC as the underlying transport protocol, which brings lower latency and better loading experience to network applications than HTTP/2.
MQTT over QUIC is the most innovative development in the MQTT protocol since the release of the MQTT 5.0 specification in 2017. With multiplexing, faster connection establishment and migration and other advantages, it has the potential to become the next generation MQTT protocol standard.
MQTT 5.0 defines three transport types: TCP, TLS, and WebSocket. Among IoT security best practices, MQTT over TLS/SSL is widely used in production environments to secure communications between clients and brokers. However, it is slow and has high latency, requiring 3.5 RTTs, 3-way handshake for TCP and 4-way handshake for TLS, to establish a new MQTT connection .
Compared with MQTT over TLS/SSL, MQTT over QUIC is faster and has lower latency. It only needs 1 RTT when establishing a connection for the first time, and can use the feature of 0 RTT connection recovery to accelerate reconnection. The QUIC protocol stack can be customized for a variety of use cases, such as in unstable network environments, or lower-latency client-to-server communication scenarios. It can play an important role in scenarios such as the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) under the mobile network and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) that require extremely low latency, and effectively improve its user experience.
The open source MQTT message server EMQX introduced MQTT over QUIC support in its latest version 5.0 , and is the world's first MQTT message server that supports MQTT over QUIC. At present, EMQ is actively promoting the standardization of MQTT over QUIC as a member of the OASIS MQTT Technical Committee. It is foreseeable that in the near future, MQTT will also use QUIC as its main transport layer like HTTP/3.
MQTT Serverless
The rise of serverless patterns in cloud computing marks a groundbreaking paradigm shift in the way applications are designed, developed, deployed, and run. In this model, developers will be able to focus on the business logic of the application without having to manage the infrastructure, thereby improving agility, scalability, and cost-effectiveness.
The MQTT message server in Serverless mode will be a cutting-edge architectural innovation in 2023. Traditional IoT applications take minutes or even hours to deploy MQTT message services on the cloud or in an enterprise's private environment. In contrast, Serverless MQTT can quickly complete the deployment of MQTT services with just a few clicks.
In addition to the extremely fast deployment speed, the greater value of Serverless MQTT lies in its unparalleled flexibility: seamless expansion of resources according to user needs, and a pay-as-you-go pricing model that matches this elastic architecture. Serverless MQTT is expected to promote the wider application of MQTT, reduce operating costs, and stimulate innovative collaboration in different industries. We might even see a free serverless MQTT messaging server for every IoT and IIoT developer.
In March 2023, EMQX Cloud launched the world's first Serverless MQTT service , providing users with 5-second extremely fast deployment and more flexible billing methods, helping users to efficiently develop IoT applications at a lower cost.
MQTT multi-tenant architecture
The multi-tenant architecture is an important basis for implementing Serverless MQTT services. IoT devices from different users or tenants can connect to the same large-scale MQTT cluster while keeping their data and business logic isolated from other tenants.
Multi-tenant architecture is very common in SaaS applications, that is, one application serves multiple customers or tenants. It is usually implemented in two different ways:
- Tenant isolation: Provide each tenant with a separate application instance running on a server or virtual machine.
- Database isolation: Multiple tenants share an application instance, but each tenant has its own database schema to ensure data isolation.
In MQTT Broker's multi-tenant architecture, each device and tenant has a separate, isolated namespace, including a unique topic prefix and access control list (ACL), used to define which topics users can publish or subscribe to.
The multi-tenant MQTT message server can reduce management overhead and flexibly support complex scenarios or large-scale IoT application scenarios. For example, departments and applications in a large organization can use the same MQTT cluster as different tenants.
MQTT Sparkplug 3.0
MQTT Sparkplug is an open standard specification designed by the Eclipse Foundation. Its latest version is MQTT Sparkplug 3.0. It defines a unified data access specification for industrial equipment and can connect various industrial sensors, motion actuators, and programmable logic through the MQTT protocol. controller (PLC) and gateway.
MQTT Sparkplug 3.0 is released in November 2022 with the following key new features and improvements:
- MQTT 5.0 support: Added support for MQTT 5.0, including new features such as shared subscriptions, message expiration, and flow control.
- Optimized data transmission: Data transmission is optimized, using more compact data encoding and compression algorithms.
- Extended Data Model: An extended data model is introduced that allows more detailed communication of device information and also supports the transfer of configuration data and other information such as device metadata.
- Higher security: Including several improvements to security, such as support for mutual TLS authentication, optimized access control mechanism, etc.
- Simplified Device Management: Includes automatic device registration and discovery, simplified device configuration, improved diagnostics, and more.
MQTT Sparkplug aims to simplify the connection and communication between different industrial devices, and realize efficient industrial data collection, processing and analysis. With the release of the new version, MQTT Sparkplug 3.0 will be more widely used in the field of Industrial Internet of Things.
MQTT Unified Namespace
Unified Namespace (Unified Namespace) is a solution architecture built on MQTT Broker for Industrial Internet of Things and Industry 4.0. It provides a unified namespace for MQTT topics and a centralized repository for messages and structured data.
In traditional IIoT systems, OT and IT systems are often separated, with data, protocols and tools operating independently. By adopting a unified namespace, OT and IT systems can exchange data more efficiently, and finally realize the unification of OT and IT in the Internet of Things era.
Today, through the open source MQTT message server EMQX or NanoMQ provided by EMQ , combined with the industrial protocol gateway software Neuron , users will be able to build a unified namespace architecture supported by the most advanced technology in the IT industry.
MQTT cross domain cluster
MQTT Geo-Distribution is an innovative architecture that allows MQTT Brokers deployed in different regions or clouds to work together as a single cluster. Through cross-domain clustering, MQTT messages can be automatically synchronized and transmitted between MQTT Brokers in different regions.
There are two ways to implement MQTT cross-domain clustering:
- Single cluster, multiple regions: A single MQTT cluster with each node running in a different region.
- Multi-cluster, multi-cloud: Multiple MQTT clusters distributed in different clouds are connected together.
We can combine these two methods to create a reliable IoT data infrastructure between MQTT Brokers deployed across regions. Through MQTT cross-domain clustering, enterprises can establish a global MQTT access network across multiple clouds. Regardless of physical location, devices and applications can access and communicate with each other from the nearest node.
MQTT Streams
MQTT Streams is a highly anticipated extension capability of the MQTT protocol, which can process massive and high-frequency data streams in real time within the MQTT Broker. This further enhances the capabilities of the traditional MQTT Broker on the basis of the publish-subscribe mode message transmission. Through MQTT Streams, the client can produce and consume MQTT messages in the form of streams like Apache Kafka, so as to realize historical message playback. This is especially important for event-driven processing, ensuring eventual data consistency, auditability, and compliance.
Stream processing is critical to extracting real-time business value from the massive amounts of data generated by IoT devices. Previously, this process was implemented through an outdated and complex big data stack, requiring MQTT Broker to integrate with Kafka, Hadoop, Flink or Spark.
With built-in stream processing, MQTT Streams simplifies the IoT data processing architecture, improves data processing efficiency and response time, and provides a unified messaging and stream processing platform for the IoT. Through functions such as message deduplication, message replay, and message expiration, MQTT Streams achieves high throughput, low latency, and fault tolerance, making it a powerful tool for real-time data stream processing in MQTT-based IoT applications.
epilogue
Collectively, these 7 technology trends for MQTT reflect the advancement of emerging technologies and their important role in driving the development of IoT.
As a standard messaging protocol developed over two decades, MQTT continues to grow in importance. As the Internet of Things is more and more widely used in various industries, the MQTT protocol is also constantly evolving to meet new challenges, to meet the needs of lower latency connections, more convenient MQTT service deployment, complex scenarios or flexible applications under large-scale Internet of Things Management and industrial equipment access requirements. As the nervous system of the huge Internet of Things, MQTT will surely play an important role in key areas such as the Industrial Internet of Things and the Internet of Vehicles in 2023 and beyond.
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