Internet of Things – Network

Overview

Internet of things (IoT) is about smart devices. These devices atleast should have:

• Identity: can be uniquely identifiable via ipv6
• Communication mechanism: to talk to other devices or controllers
• Sensors: To capture the state and relay the readings

In this article let us go over different communication protocols which are available for IoTs.

Protocols

 

There are three ways smart devices can talk to each other

1. Using http protocol
2. Using MQTT protocol
3. Using CoAP protocol

 

1. HTTP: This is used heavily for creating api and web services layer. IoT’s can use this web protocol to interact with various other devices. One drawback of this protocol is that, it has lot of header data, which may not suitable for low bandwidth IoT devices. HTTP/2 is the newest streaming protocol format which has less header data hence can be beneficial for IoT devices.
2. CoAP: This is the Constrained Application Protocol which is designed for the needs of constrained devices like IoTs. This is also a document transfer protocol like HTTP with much smaller packet size. CoAP runs on User Datagram Protocol (UDP) instead of TCP.
3. MQTT: This is a MQ Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol from IBM which is based on a publish/subscribe messaging architecture designed for light weight communications using TCP protocol. This is the best protocol to use for IoT devices.