Mosquitto vs NATS: What are the differences?

Introduction

This Markdown code provides a comparison between Mosquitto and NATS, highlighting the key differences between the two messaging systems.

1. Installation and Dependencies: Mosquitto requires the installation of a message broker, such as Mosquitto broker, in order to function. It uses MQTT protocol and is suitable for lightweight IoT applications. On the other hand, NATS is a lightweight messaging system that doesn't require any external dependencies for basic functionality. It is designed for high-performance and scalability.

2. Messaging Patterns: Mosquitto primarily follows a publish-subscribe messaging pattern. It allows for multiple clients to subscribe to specific topics and receive messages published to those topics. NATS, on the other hand, supports multiple patterns including publish-subscribe, request-reply, and point-to-point messaging. It provides more flexibility in terms of messaging patterns.

3. Message Delivery Guarantees: Mosquitto supports three levels of Quality of Service (QoS) for message delivery: QoS 0 (at most once), QoS 1 (at least once), and QoS 2 (exactly once). It allows the client to choose the desired level of reliability. NATS, by default, follows an "at most once" delivery guarantee, where messages are not persisted and can be lost if the subscriber is not available at the time of message delivery. However, NATS Streaming provides additional features like durable subscriptions and guaranteed message delivery.

4. Security Features: Mosquitto has built-in support for Transport Layer Security (TLS) which provides secure communication over the network. It also provides support for username/password-based authentication. In contrast, NATS requires additional configurations for secure communication using TLS. It supports token-based authentication and can integrate with external authentication providers like OAuth.

5. Clustering and Scalability: Mosquitto can be configured in a clustered setup with the help of message brokers to achieve scalability. However, it requires additional configurations and setup. NATS, on the other hand natively supports clustering and automatic discovery of nodes. It enables horizontal scalability without much effort.

6. Community and Ecosystem: Mosquitto has a larger and more established community compared to NATS. It has extensive documentation, active forums, and a wide range of client libraries available in various programming languages. NATS, although newer, is gaining popularity and has an active community. It provides client libraries for several programming languages but may have a slightly smaller ecosystem compared to Mosquitto.

In Summary, Mosquitto and NATS differ in terms of installation dependencies, messaging patterns, message delivery guarantees, security features, clustering capabilities, and community/ecosystem support.