MQTT was originally developed in 1999 to monitor oil and gas pipelines running through the desert. Monitoring devices were in remote locations where landline, wired, or radio transmission connection was either difficult or impractical.
The only option, at the time, was satellite communication which was very expensive and charged based upon the amount of transmitted data. With many installations comprising thousands of field sensors, the challenge was to develop a form of communication that could provide reliable data using minimal bandwidth – and so, MQTT was born.
And, some twenty years later, it is the same lightweight efficiency that makes MQTT the protocol of choice for today’s Internet of Things.