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I did a prototype project for work a few years ago that utilized the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) for communicating with an Arduino board over a mesh network, but we put the brakes on the project due to a serious lack of security in our devices. We ended up abandoning CoAP for our project to move to an in-house protocol that we adapted for our needs.

I've done a little digging around, and it looks like there are still a few implementations floating around, but I was curious if anyone is actually using CoAP in any products.

Is CoAP still a good protocol to use, or has the industry settled on a de-facto standard?

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Jarren Long
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2 Answers2

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The reason that you find few implementations is most likely because CoAP is a relatively young protocol. It was first proposed in 2010, and the current version dates from 2014: RFC 7252.

For application level protocols the popular alternatives are HTTP, which is heavy for constrained devices, and MQTT, which requires a broker device and runs on TCP. They both have been around since the late 90s. I think CoAP just needs some time.

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Eirik M
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Some of the improvements introduced with COAP might become less relevant with the introduction of HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 so will need to wait and see how the protocol war evolve.

Luca Mattia Ferrari
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