MQTT Protocol in Practice: Definitive Reference for Developers and Engineers

"MQTT Protocol in Practice" is an authoritative guide that demystifies the inner workings of the MQTT messaging protocol, providing readers with both a solid theoretical foundation and hands-on strategies for real-world deployment. The book begins by tracing the origins of MQTT, highlighting its evolution from lightweight, bandwidth-conscious roots to its current status as a leading standard for IoT messaging. Through comprehensive coverage of protocol structures, operational semantics, session handling, and quality of service mechanisms, it equips both newcomers and experienced professionals to master MQTT at its core, including in-depth comparisons between versions 3.x and 5.

Building on these fundamentals, the book explores advanced messaging patterns and operational best practices. Readers will uncover practical guidance for managing complex topic hierarchies, implementing robust retained message policies, and integrating reliability strategies such as the Last Will and Testament feature. Detailed chapters address message ordering, payload encoding across formats such as JSON and Protobuf, and security architecture, including authentication, transport encryption, access control, and mitigation of common threats. Further sections delve into broker engineering, from configuration and plugin design to observability, scaling, and high availability, ensuring resilience and operational agility in distributed environments.