Selecting the Device Connection Protocol


EnOS provides several connection solutions for developers to connect device data to the EnOS platform. The first step to determine which solution to use is to check whether the device to connect meets the following two conditions.

  • Supports TCP/UDP communication.

  • Supports the data format of the EnOS device connection protocol through firmware upgrade.


If the device meets both conditions, the device can be directly connected to the EnOS IoT Hub.


If the device does not meet either of the conditions and is connected to another system or cloud platform, you can connect it to EnOS through message integration. See Message Integration for more information.

Direct Connection to EnOS

Devices can connect to EnOS through the following protocols.

  • MQTT

  • CoAP

  • HTTP

Protocols Comparison

Function

MQTT

CoAP

HTTP

Static authentication

Supported

Supported

Supported

Dynamic authentication

Supported

Supported

Not supported

Certificate based bi-directional authentication

Supported

/

Only certificate based unidirectional authentication is supported (platform authenticated devices)

Reporting of the tags, attributes, measurement points, and events of devices

Supported

Supported

Supported

Passing data through

Supported

Supported

/

File-type data reporting

Not supported

Not supported

Supported

Batch reporting of measurement points and offline measurement points

Supported

Not supported

Not supported

Measurement point setting and service invocation

Supported

Supported

Not supported

Receiving passed-through data

Supported

Supported

Not supported

Device registration, sub-device upper & lower thresholds, and device lifecycle management

Supported

Not supported

Not supported

Firmware OTA update

Supported

Not supported

Not supported


The three protocols provide the following schemes in terms of data security.

  • MQTT: Optional certificate-based Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol transfer

  • CoAP: Optional Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) protocol transfer based on pre-shared key (PSK)

  • HTTP: Optional certificate-based TLS protocol transfer

Connection Protocol Flow Chart

You can use the following flow chart to determine which protocol your device should use to connect to EnOS.

../../_images/connection_plan_choice.png

Note

Devices that are already connected to a third-party cloud can forward their data to EnOS cloud through the EnOS message integration function.