Protocols

A natural question is, why are there any protocols outside of HTTP to transport data across the WAN? HTTP has provided significant services and abilities for the internet for over 20 years, yet was designed and architected for general purpose computing in client/server models. IoT devices can be very constrained, remote, and bandwidth limited. Therefore, more efficient, secure, and scalable protocols are necessary to manage a plethora of devices in various network topologies such as mesh networks.  

In transporting data to the internet, designs are relegated to the TCP/IP foundation layers. TCP and UDP protocols are the obvious and only choice in data communication with TCP being significantly more complex in its implementation than UDP (being a multicast protocol). UDP, however, does not have the stability and reliability of TCP, forcing some designs to compensate by adding resiliency in the application layers above UDP. 

Many of the protocols listed in this chapter are Message...