In general, the Internet of Things is about connecting devices to the Internet, but how they connect is not always obvious. IoT devices connect and communicate through their technical communication models. An effective communication model shows how the process works and helps one understand how communication can be done. The Internet of Things (IoT) enables people and things (devices) to be connected wherever they are, using any network or service they like.
Types of communication models -
- Request-Response Model: This communication model is based on the client (IoT Device) making requests and the server responding to those requests. Upon receiving a request, the server decides what response to provide, fetches the requested data, prepares the response, and then sends it back to the client. This model is stateless because the data between requests is not retained, therefore each request is handled independently.
- Publisher-Subscriber Model: Publishers, brokers, and consumers are all involved in this communication model. Publishes are the sources of data that send data to topics. The broker manages the topics, and consumers (consume data from topics) subscribe to the topics. Publishers and consumers are unaware of each other. Upon receiving data for a topic from the publisher, the broker forwards it to all subscribed consumers. As a result, brokers are responsible for receiving data from publishers and sending it to the appropriate consumers.
- Push-Pull Model: This communication model entails data producers pushing the data into queues, while data consumers pull the data from the queues. Neither producer nor consumer needs to know about each other. The queues help decouple the messages between the consumers and the producers. Also, queues act as a buffer when there is a mismatch between the rate at which producers push data and the rate at which consumers pull it.
- Exclusive-Pair Model: Exclusive pairs are full-duplex, bidirectional communication models developed for constant/continuous connections between a client and server. After a connection is established, clients and servers can exchange messages. As long as a client doesn't send a request to close the connection, the connection remains open. The server is aware of every open connection.
