What protocol does OpenDXL use?

  • Great question.


    DXL is not a new protocol, it can be best thought of as a "standardized message format". This message format could be sent over any protocol that allows for sending a generic payload (bytes). DXL does not require any changes to the protocol itself.


    With that said, the only protocol that DXL is compatible with today is "MQTT". During the development of DXL we prototyped its use over a variety of protocols (STOMP, AMQP, OpenWire, etc.) but ultimately decided to limit its initial support to MQTT. One reason for this decision is that we made enhancements to the MQTT messaging brokers themselves so that they could intrinsically understand the DXL message format in support of advanced features such as services, request/response (point-to-point) messaging, service fail over, and service zones.


    Hope this helps,

    Chris