Hello Everyone, I am working on a client project and I am confused about which one is better in data delivery between IoT and M2M? According to this post, M2M devices can be connected through mobile or other networks but not an idea about IoT? Can anyone suggest me about IoT?
Hello @ankitdixit,
We’re glad to see you around the community, welcome!
I think there’s a confusion of concepts. IoT refers to a set of technologies to build monitoring and control applications over the internet. These technologies encompass hardware (microcontrollers, sensors, antennas), connection layers, communication protocols to the internet (typically HTTP, MQTT, TCP, CoAP, among others protocols), and an application layer to consume the data coming from devices and orchestrate the whole application itself.
In contrast, M2M, as mentioned in the post you shared, is a subset of IoT that deals with the communication between devices or to the internet only. In that layer falls both the communication protocol, which can be any of the ones listed above, and the connection layer, which can be WiFi, Ethernet, Cellular, or even more recent technologies such Sigfox or LoRaWAN.
With this in mind, when you say “data delivery”, we should be talking solely about how your devices connect to the internet (WiFi, Ethernet, etc) and what protocol are they going to use to communicate with whatever is your application or application provider (such as Ubidots). So, referring specifically to Ubidots, we are agnostic to the type of connection and to the protocol every time the latter complies with our API supported protocols and their data structure.
In terms of the best data delivery method, that will then depend on the application, some are ok with WiFi and HTTP, but some others, for example, will require control capabilities, which are best suited by the MQTT protocol, or some others rely on devices placed in remote locations which force the connectivity to be cellular (if coverage available) or LoRaWAN.
To better guide you through this decision making, would you mind sharing a bit further about the project you’re developing? Information such as the devices you’re planning to use, the vertical (smart agriculture, Industry 4.0, healthcare –to name a few) you’ll be serving or the web application requirements are key to choose which way to go.
All the best,
Ángela