MQTT is a publish-subscribe messaging protocol that allows devices to connect to a broker server and publish or subscribe to topics. It has three main parts: a broker server that accepts subscribers and retransmits messages from publishers, subscriber clients that listen for incoming messages, and publisher clients that can produce information to notify others. MQTT uses TCP/IP and a publisher-broker-subscriber pattern to allow one publisher to multicast messages to many subscribers through topics. It supports different levels of quality of service (QoS) to control message delivery reliability.