Product Introduction

About smart-mqtt

smart-mqtt is designed for enterprise-level IoT scenarios with tens of thousands of device connections. It is also the first commercial product launched by the smartboot open-source organization, marking a significant strategic transformation from community-driven to sustainable development in the IoT field.

Why Commercialization?

In the open-source world, we have witnessed many excellent projects gradually fade away due to lack of sustainable investment. The development of an enterprise-level MQTT Broker is no easy task - from protocol compatibility to massive connection support, from plugin ecosystem to operations toolchain, every aspect requires long-term investment from a professional team.

The essence of commercialization is to build a healthy value cycle: users get stable and reliable products and services, and the team gets resource guarantees for continuous iteration. This is not a departure from the open-source spirit, but a necessary choice to make open-source projects go further.

Our Expectations

• Open Source Code: All product features are open source, users can choose freely.
• Quality Assurance: Gradually stricter testing processes and SLA systems
• Long-termism: Reject short-term profit-taking, committed to building products that stand the test of time

We believe: Good products deserve to be priced, and continuous value deserves to be invested in.

Core Advantages

Advantage	Business Value
🚀 Ultra High Performance	Continuously optimized for 100K+ device access scenarios, featuring high throughput and low latency, the larger the connection volume, the more obvious the cost advantage
🔧 Open Architecture	Plugin-based design for on-demand expansion, southbound adaptation to multi-protocol devices, northbound bridging to enterprise systems, rejecting feature redundancy
☕ Java Ecosystem	Zero-barrier integration with existing tech stack, team gets up to speed quickly, mature operations toolchain, no burden for long-term maintenance
🔄 Standard Protocol	Fully compliant with MQTT 3.1.1/5.0, no vendor lock-in, business autonomy, smooth migration at any time
🇨🇳 Self-controllable	Full-stack self-developed core components, transparent and secure code, compliant with government and enterprise information innovation requirements

Main Features

smart-mqtt, through its built-in enterprise-plugin, serves as the foundational core component of the product, providing a fully-featured Web management console and powerful plugin lifecycle management capabilities.

After the service starts normally, you can access the platform login page through a browser at http://localhost:18083/ (adjust IP according to actual situation).

The management platform provides RESTful APIs based on HTTP services, with the frontend built using the Shadcn UI framework. Main functional modules include:

Functional Module	Description
User Authentication	Session-based user login, supports username + password authentication
License Management	Authorization verification, License import, status display
Broker Management	Cluster node list query
Connection Management	MQTT client connection query, forced disconnection
Topic Management	Subscription relationship query, Topic statistics query
Plugin Management	Plugin list, start/stop control, configuration management, plugin marketplace, local upload installation
System Settings	User management, system parameter configuration

Dashboard

The dashboard is the visual data display center of the management platform, providing real-time monitoring capabilities for Broker running status:

• Connection Metrics: Real-time display of current active connections, historical connection peaks, connection rates, and other key indicators
• Message Metrics: Monitor message send/receive rates, throughput, message backlog, etc.
• System Resources: Display server CPU, memory, disk, and other basic resource usage
• Trend Charts: Support displaying metric change trends by time dimension for analyzing business patterns

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Connection Management

Provides real-time monitoring and management capabilities for MQTT client connections:

• Connection List Query: Supports paginated queries, fuzzy search by ClientID
• Connection Information Display: ClientID, username, IP address, connection time, last activity time, status
• Forced Disconnection: Can actively disconnect specified client connections

Tip

For scenarios with massive devices, it is recommended to use MySQL storage.

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Plugin Management

IoT business from POC to mass production, from single device access to multi-protocol fusion, requirements are always in dynamic change. smart-mqtt’s plugin management system allows enterprises to build and evolve their own MQTT platform like building blocks, on-demand.

Solving Three Core Pain Points

Pain Point	Solution
Feature Redundancy or Missing	Enable WebSocket, cluster, data bridging and other capabilities on-demand, use as much as needed
Change Means Downtime	Plugin hot-plugging, configuration takes effect in real-time, version seamless upgrade
Custom Requirements Hard to Implement	Standardized interface supports private plugin development, enjoying the same management experience as official plugins

Layered Capabilities, On-demand Expansion

• Connection Layer: WebSocket, SSL/TLS, multi-protocol gateway
• Security Layer: Simple authentication, enterprise-level authorization, ACL permission control
• Data Layer: MySQL persistence, Redis bridging, message queue integration
• Architecture Layer: Cluster expansion, session persistence, monitoring and alerting

One Sentence Summary: Plugin management transforms smart-mqtt from a standardized Broker into an IoT communication platform that can flexibly evolve with business, making technology truly serve business.

Plugin Discovery and Acquisition

Plugins provided officially by smart-mqtt are all built into the product. smart-mqtt also provides two plugin integration methods to meet different scenario needs:

1. Local Upload Supports uploading custom-developed JAR packages for installation, meeting privatization deployment and secondary development needs

2. Plugin Marketplace Connect to remote official plugin repository, browse, search and download published plugins

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User Management

Function	Description
User List	Paginated display of user information (username, role, description, creation time)
Add User	Create new user, set username, password, role
Update User	Modify user information, supports password reset
Delete User	Batch delete user accounts
Role Management	Supports two roles: administrator and regular user

System Parameters

System parameters are used to configure the core operating parameters of the smart-mqtt management platform, provided through the enterprise-plugin plugin.

Parameter	Description	Default Value
http.port	HTTP service listening port, used to access Web management console and RESTful API	18083
http.host	HTTP service listening address, 0.0.0.0 means listening on all network interfaces	0.0.0.0
database.dbType	Database type, supports h2 (file mode), h2_mem (memory mode), mysql	h2
database.url	MySQL database connection address, only takes effect when dbType is mysql	-
database.username	MySQL database username, only takes effect when dbType is mysql	-
database.password	MySQL database password, only takes effect when dbType is mysql	-
registry	Plugin marketplace address, used to browse and download official plugins (currently experience server)

Tip

For production environments or massive device scenarios, it is recommended to set dbType to mysql for better stability and performance.

Connection Flapping Protection

When MQTT clients frequently connect/disconnect due to network anomalies or program defects, it consumes a large amount of server resources and affects other normal clients. The connection flapping protection function protects the system through the following mechanisms:

Configuration Entry: System Settings -> Parameter Settings -> Connection Flapping Protection

• Time Window Statistics: Count each client’s connection attempts within thresholdDuration seconds
• Threshold Determination: When connection attempts exceed thresholdCount, the client is determined to be flapping
• Automatic Ban: Ban flapping clients for banTime seconds, rejecting all their connection requests during this period
• Automatic Unban: Automatically lift the ban after the ban period expires, no manual intervention required

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Cost Comparison

The procurement cost of cloud products grows almost linearly with connection volume, while smart-mqtt inherently has performance overflow advantages, so the larger the connection volume, the higher the cost-effectiveness.

Specification	SaaS Cloud Product Annual Fee	smart-mqtt Self-built Cost (Annual)
1000 connections/1000TPS/1000 subscriptions	17K	3K~5K (hardware) + license fee
50000 connections/20000TPS/1000 subscriptions	370K	10K~20K (hardware) + license fee
1M connections/200K TPS/1M subscriptions	3.768M	150K~300K (hardware estimate) + license fee

Data source: Alibaba Cloud IoT, Huawei Cloud IoT

Note: smart-mqtt self-built cost is an estimate of server hardware costs (3-year depreciation), including server, bandwidth, operations and other infrastructure costs. Actual costs vary by configuration, region, and operations strategy, for reference only.