Internet of Things Network Performance: Impact of Message and Client sizes and Reliability Levels

Consistent and timely message transmission is pivotal in the success of Internet of Things (IoT) communications. IoT applications typically involve resourceconstrained devices with limited processing power, memory capacity, and battery life. These characteristics necessitate the use of specialized communication protocols for IoT applications. Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT) is a widely adopted protocol within the IoT ecosystem. Ensuring the appropriate message size and reliability level is crucial for achieving successful MQTT communication. This article empirically assesses MQTT protocol performance across various Quality of Service (QoS) levels while considering different message and client sizes. Initially, we conducted a comparative analysis of message transfer performance between HTTP and MQTT protocols. Subsequently, we delved into the MQTT protocol’s performance across three distinct configurations: one publisher-one subscriber, multiple publishers-one subscriber, and multiple publishersmultiple subscribers. We also examined how message and client sizes impact message transfer latency. When employing a 100-byte payload, we observed that the time delay in a network comprising 150 clients is 60.71% greater than in a network with 50 clients. Similarly, with a message size of 2500 bytes, a network with 50 clients requires 96% less time to deliver than a network with 150 clients.