Provided by: mosquitto_0.15-2+deb7u3ubuntu0.1_amd64 
NAME
mqtt - MQ Telemetry Transport
SYNOPSIS
mqtt
DESCRIPTION
mqtt is a publish/subscribe messaging protocol intended that is designed to be lightweight. It is useful
for use with low power sensors, but is applicable to many scenarios.
This manual describes some of the features of mqtt version 3.1, to assist end users in getting the most
out of it. For more complete information on mqtt, see http://mqtt.org/.
PUBLISH/SUBSCRIBE
The mqtt protocol is based on the principle of publishing messages and subscribing to topics, or
"pub/sub". Multiple clients connect to a broker and subscribe to topics that they are interested in.
Clients also connect to the broker and publish messages to topics. Many clients may subscribe to the
same topics and do with the information as they please. The broker and mqtt act as a simple, common
interface for everything to connect to. This means that you if you have clients that dump subscribed
messages to a database, to twitter, pachube or even a simple text file, then it becomes very simple to
add new sensors or other data input to a database, twitter or so on.
TOPICS/SUBSCRIPTIONS
Messages in mqtt are published on topics. There is no need to configure a topic, publishing on it is
enough. Topics are treated as a hierarchy, using a slash (/) as a separator. This allows sensible
arrangement of common themes to be created, much in the same way as a filesystem. For example, multiple
computers may all publish their hard drive temperature information on the following topic, with their own
computer and hard drive name being replaced as appropriate:
• sensors/COMPUTER_NAME/temperature/HARDDRIVE_NAME
Clients can receive messages by creating subscriptions. A subscription may be to an explicit topic, in
which case only messages to that topic will be received, or it may include wildcards. Two wildcards are
available, + or #.
+ can be used as a wildcard for a single level of hierarchy. It could be used with the topic above to get
information on all computers and hard drives as follows:
• sensors/+/temperature/+
As another example, for a topic of "a/b/c/d", the following example subscriptions will match:
• a/b/c/d
• +/b/c/d
• a/+/c/d
• a/+/+/d
• +/+/+/+
The following subscriptions will not match:
• a/b/c
• b/+/c/d
• +/+/+
# can be used as a wildcard for all remaining levels of hierarchy. This means that it must be the final
character in a subscription. With a topic of "a/b/c/d", the following example subscriptions will match:
• a/b/c/d
• #
• a/#
• a/b/#
• a/b/c/#
• +/b/c/#
QUALITY OF SERVICE
mqtt defines three levels of Quality of Service (QoS). The QoS defines how hard the broker/client will
try to ensure that a message is received. Messages may be sent at any QoS level, and clients may attempt
to subscribe to topics at any QoS level. This means that the client chooses the maximum QoS it will
receive. For example, if a message is published at QoS 2 and a client is subscribed with QoS 0, the
message will be delivered to that client with QoS 0. If a second client is also subscribed to the same
topic, but with QoS 2, then it will receive the same message but with QoS 2. For a second example, if a
client is subscribed with QoS 2 and a message is published on QoS 0, the client will receive it on QoS 0.
Higher levels of QoS are more reliable, but involve higher latency and have higher bandwidth
requirements.
• 0: The broker/client will deliver the message once, with no confirmation.
• 1: The broker/client will deliver the message at least once, with confirmation required.
• 2: The broker/client will deliver the message exactly once by using a four step handshake.
RETAINED MESSAGES
All messages may be set to be retained. This means that the broker will keep the message even after
sending it to all current subscribers. If a new subscription is made that matches the topic of the
retained message, then the message will be sent to the client. This is useful as a "last known good"
mechanism. If a topic is only updated infrequently, then without a retained message, a newly subscribed
client may have to wait a long time to receive an update. With a retained message, the client will
receive an instant update.
CLEAN SESSION / DURABLE CONNECTIONS
On connection, a client sets the "clean session" flag, which is sometimes also known as the "clean start"
flag. If clean session is set to false, then the connection is treated as durable. This means that when
the client disconnects, any subscriptions it has will remain and any subsequent QoS 1 or 2 messages will
be stored until it connects again in the future. If clean session is true, then all subscriptions will be
removed for the client when it disconnects.
WILLS
When a client connects to a broker, it may inform the broker that it has a will. This is a message that
it wishes the broker to send when the client disconnects unexpectedly. The will message has a topic, QoS
and retain status just the same as any other message.
SEE ALSO
mosquitto(8) mosquitto_pub(1) mosquitto_sub(1)
AUTHOR
Roger Light <roger@atchoo.org> 5 February 2012 mqtt(7)