In reply to Paul Duffy.

Hello Paul

Thanks for your response.

And I agree with you: Comparing these protocols is not comparing apples to apples.

Now CoAP, REST & MQTT are all excelent transport protocols, CoAP & REST being request/response, and MQTT being publish/subscribe. Very good transport protocols one might add.

But the topic was IoT-protocols, not transport protocols, and IoT is more than simple transport. It is as you say with regards to CoAP: The rest has to be added on-top. The same applies to REST & MQTT. Of course you can build good IoT applications using these techniques, but it needs skills, which obviously Cisco has.

But it is not sufficient that one large actor has these skills. True IoT interoperability comes when there are standards enabling everybody to publish their devices on the Internet and they can interact with each other seamlessly, regardless of manufacturer.

Therefore, in my opinion, to be a successful "IoT-protocol" you need to solve more than just simple transport. This is what I wanted to illustrate using the additional categories.

BTW, good post and interesting subject.