The Internet of Things (IoT) has recently gained massive traction. IoT challenges enterprises, small companies, and developers with new problems to solve. While HTTP is the de facto protocol for the human web, communication between machines at scale requires a paradigm shift — steering away from request/response and leading toward publish/subscribe. This is where the ultra-lightweight, massively scalable, open, and easy-to-implement MQTT protocol enters the picture.
In this Refcard, we dive into what MQTT is and how it works, including brokers, client libraries, and more.
The terms IoT and M2M are often talked about synonymously, however, they are far from identical, and when you’re looking to implement a solution, it’s important to know the differences between the two -- or rather, when you should use one over the other.
M2M stands for "machine to machine," a technology that is similar to IoT, or the "Internet of Things," but which also has some key differences. It’s these differences that make it important to know whether your project is better suited to an M2M or an IoT solution – and, ideally, this is something you’ll define in the early stages.
Over the last decade, the Internet of Things (IoT) has caused widespread disruption in every sphere of our life. The evolution of IoT is not influenced by advancement in the unique technology segment; instead, a series of emerging technologies and innovation trends have converged together to create a unified experience of the ubiquitous world. The emergence of Edge computing, the 5G/ 6G revolution, and cloud computing have introduced a set of architectural patterns to minimize latency, network bandwidth requirements and allowed systems to scale beyond the limit. In the world of ‘new normal, the endless opportunities with both business and social transformations will weave IoT applications into our everyday life with billions of sensors seamlessly interacting with each other. Big Data and advanced analytics have transformed the massive volume of sensory signals and multimedia feeds into actionable insights and new revenue streams across the digital value chains.
A rapid expansion in exposing pervasive channels and deploying intelligent automation have brought critical challenges towards the future of digital transformation in the 21st century. The promising applications of AI and ML are mostly executed within the centralized cloud ecosystem, far from the point of action. Such intelligence is not designed to gain situational awareness from within the operating landscape. Harnessing the benefit of capturing and analyzing temporal data and timely interpretation of sensory events within the active window of the operational cycles are emerging as the key imperatives to gain strategic advantage and address cybersecurity concerns. As the diversity of sensors and applications grow exponentially, structured intelligence or prebuilt rule-based automation deployed in the edge runtime will not be efficient and extensible to elevate process automation and autonomic functions.
Social distancing and isolation have become our reality, quickly changing the way we go about our daily routines, from how we shop to how we work. The world is searching for new ways to limit our exposure and stop the spread of COVID-19. I recently saw a photo of an elevator in an apartment block in China.
A Chinese apartment highrise could consist of over 30 floors, so walking isn't an option, but how do you operate a lift without touching the buttons? The property manager stuck a sponge to the wall, and it was stuck with toothpicks for button-pushing. An ingenious DIY hack, but what if there was another way to create contactless connections using technology?
The surge of networked devices in the Internet of Things (IoT) increased the stakes for information security once more. IoT sensors and actors also pose a threat to existing information infrastructure. They can be used as remote-controlled drones in so-called Distributed-Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks.
How do we ensure the trustworthiness of information systems on the Internet of Things? How do we protect against attacks of a global bot army?
