{
  "id": 20050977,
  "title": "Using NLTP with MQTT: Healing 35% Wireless Packet Loss on ESP-NOW & UDP Before Your Broker",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/14/using-nltp-with-mqtt-healing-35-wireless-packet-loss-on-esp-now-udp",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-11-14T21:07:35.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Dev.to",
    "slug": "dev-to",
    "url": "https://dev.to/amannotsofunny/using-nltp-with-mqtt-healing-35-wireless-packet-loss-on-esp-now-udp-before-your-broker-i0e"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Wireless packet loss plagued outdoor sensor nodes on 2.4 GHz radio links, ESP-NOW, or rural 4G modems. TCP struggled with the loss, causing 15-20 seconds of stalling for sensor batch transmission. Small microcontrollers faced the opposite issue with raw ESP-NOW, as single pings worked but larger JSONL batches failed. To address this, an MIT-licensed open-source wire protocol called NLTP (v1.6.0) was developed. NLTP uses a compact header, LZ4 compression, forward-secret AEAD, and systematic Reed-Solomon error correction. By keeping the MQTT broker untouched, NLTP improves wireless packet loss recovery up to 35% before data reaches the MQTT broker.",
  "summary": "If you have ever deployed outdoor sensor nodes over noisy 2.4 GHz radio links, ESP-NOW, or rural 4G CGNAT modems, you have probably hit the First-Mile Wall : MQTT over TCP is great inside the cloud , where wildcard topics ( fleet/+/telemetry ), retained state, and subscriber fan-out shine. Out on a noisy radio link (15-35% random packet loss), TCP falls apart. Kernel TCP interprets wireless…",
  "key_points": [
    "NLTP protocol developed to address wireless packet loss in ESP-NOW and UDP",
    "NLTP improves packet loss recovery by up to 35% before reaching MQTT broker",
    "NLTP uses compact header, LZ4 compression, AEAD, and Reed-Solomon error correction"
  ],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}