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If you had to bet on one currently 'boring' industrial communication protocol (not EtherCAT, not PROFINET) that will become critically important in the next 5 years due to IoT expansion, which would it be and what specific use case will drive its resurgence?

BenjaminWood

BenjaminWood

2025-12-13

answer

I'd put my money on Modbus TCP/IP. Here's why: While it's often dismissed as 'boring' or 'legacy,' Modbus TCP is actually perfectly positioned for an IoT resurgence. The specific use case that will drive this is the massive retrofitting of legacy industrial equipment for IoT connectivity.

Think about it - there are millions of industrial devices out there that already speak Modbus (RTU or TCP). Factories aren't going to replace all their existing equipment overnight. Instead, they'll use industrial IoT gateways to bridge these legacy systems into modern IoT ecosystems. Modbus TCP becomes the critical 'translator' protocol that allows 20-year-old PLCs and sensors to feed data into cloud platforms, predictive maintenance systems, and AI analytics tools.

The driving force will be predictive maintenance in smart factories. Companies need to extract data from their existing equipment to monitor performance, predict failures, and optimize operations. Modbus TCP gateways are becoming the standard solution for this retrofitting challenge. They're cost-effective, widely understood by industrial engineers, and provide a straightforward path to IoT integration without expensive hardware replacements.

So while newer protocols like MQTT and OPC UA get all the attention for cloud connectivity, it's the humble Modbus TCP that will quietly become the workhorse connecting the industrial past to the IoT future. It's the protocol that will enable the 'brownfield' IoT revolution - bringing existing factories into the digital age without breaking the bank.

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