Published by Michael Becker
Last updated on January 29, 2024
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7 minute read
Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) is a simple lightweight protocol for transmitting data between machines. It has become one of the most important protocols in the internet of things (IoT) and now plays a major role for many companies. However, this protocol has already existed since 1999 and was developed by IBM. In 2014, it was approved as a standard by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standard (OASIS).
Feel free to have a look at this video if you'd like to get some further information:
Nowadays MQTT is indispensable for many industrial companies and forms the basis for their production. In order to avoid malfunctions or failures during the production process, the need for a monitoring solution is becoming ever greater. This is where Paessler PRTG comes into play. PRTG offers IT admins in industrial companies an all-inclusive solution to monitor everything that deals with MQTT.
IT/OT convergence is an important topic and we want to enable our users to combine these two worlds into one within PRTG.
For this purpose, there are 3 MQTT sensors available which I would like to introduce:
- MQTT Round Trip sensor
- MQTT Statistics sensor
- MQTT Subscribe Custom sensor
MQTT Round Trip sensor
Using this sensor enables you to monitor the availability of an MQTT broker to ensure your devices can transmit their data. This sensor checks if a connection to the broker can be established, if the broker accepts messages, if the broker forwards message to a matching subscriber and measures the connection times and the round trip time from publishing a message until receiving it back on a subscribed topic.
The sensor can show the following:
- Message round-trip time (RTT)
- Round trip status
- Publisher connection time
- Subscriber connection time
For more details, please have a look at the PRTG Manual.
MQTT Statistics sensor
Since the release of version 20.2.59, the MQTT Statistics sensor is available. This allows you to check if your IoT devices and the broker are sending messages. The sensor monitors MQTT topics and shows related statistics of the broker, like the number of incoming messages from a subscribed topic and the received payload.
The sensor can show the following:
- Messages received since the last scan
- Payload received
For more details, please have a look at the PRTG Manual.
MQTT Subscribe Custom sensor
This brand-new sensor, released in version 20.3.61, subscribes to an MQTT topic and monitors up to five numerical values from the received JSON data. You can configure the displayed values in the channels according to your needs. Together with the MQTT Round Trip and MQTT Statistics sensors, you are now perfectly equipped for MQTT monitoring with PRTG.
The sensor can show the following:
- Numerical values returned by received JSON data
For more details, please have a look at the PRTG Manual.
How do you use MQTT in your infrastructure and how could you use these sensors? We are looking forward to your comments or feedback on the MQTT sensors!
You there!
