MQTT-SN (MQTT for Sensor Networks) is a protocol designed specifically to work on wireless networks. It uses the same publish/subscribe model as MQTT and can be considered as a version of MQTT.
The main characteristics of wireless sensor networks that drove the design of MQTT-SN are low power battery-operated sensors with very limited processing power and storage, limited payload size, and not always being on (sleeping).
The main differences between MQTT-SN and MQTT involve reducing the size of the message payload, removing the need for a permanent connection by using UDP as the transport protocol, and using topic IDs in place of topic names.
MQTT-SN also includes features such as short topic names, pre-defined topics, a discovery process to let clients discover the gateway, and an offline keep-alive procedure for sleeping clients.
The architecture of MQTT-SN includes three components: an MQTT-SN client, an MQTT-SN gateway, and an MQTT-SN forwarder. The specification defines two gateway types: a transparent gateway where each MQTT-SN connection has a corresponding MQTT connection, and an aggregating gateway where multiple MQTT-SN connections share a single MQTT connection.
In summary, MQTT-SN is a protocol designed to extend the capabilities of the MQTT protocol to wireless sensor networks. It offers many features that make it well-suited for use in IoT environments with low power and limited processing capabilities.
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