Bringing MQTT Brokers to the Edge: A Preliminary Evaluation

MQTT is becoming a clear standard in the IoT arena. Its flexibility in interconnecting various devices by decoupling timing and locations from the interaction among clients is extremely interesting in current deployments. The centralized approach of MQTT brings anyway drawbacks that are currently being tackled by researchers and practitioners. In this paper we provide a preliminary evaluation of the process of embedding an MQTT broker using the 5G Network Virtual Function approach. Through a real testbed, we measure how an MQTT broker can scale at the edge by regulating the incoming traffic using a load balancing approach.