Using MQTT instead of RAW TCP/IP Sockets?

Question

Everyone is talking about MQTT, so I have an application where the data is scrambled and sent over a raw TCP socket.

The data is received at the server side, descrambled and used for whatever application.

AWS is telling me to change it to MQTT, is it worth it?

My devices are microcontrollers connected to 3G Modems ( Via SPI / UART). The way data goes out is via AT Commands. So i scramble the data and load it into the AT Command and execute it every time data has to go out to the server via the modem.

I am not allowed to have a Linux Setup everything has to be in C as its an embedded device.

I have around 100k Devices that send 200 bytes to the server every 2 minutes.

This byte data is sensor information eg packed floar,float,int,int,double,float etc, total is coming to 200 bytes per message.

Answer 1

To use MQTT with AWS you would have to implement certificate based authentication and SSL as these are a mandatory requirement for the AWS MQTT broker.

Given that you are having to build each IP packet manually and send them via AT commands I would say that the level of effort is unlikely to be worth the investment if you can not change your hardware to something a little more capable.