AMQP Adapter Configuration

The AMQP protocol adapter exposes AMQP based endpoints for Eclipse Hono™’s south bound Telemetry, Event and Command & Control APIs.

The adapter is implemented as a Spring Boot application. It can be run either directly from the command line or by means of starting the corresponding Docker image created from it.

The adapter supports the following standard configuration options:

Service Configuration

The following table provides an overview of the configuration variables and corresponding command line options for configuring the AMQP adapter.

Environment Variable
Command Line Option
Mandatory Default Value Description
HONO_AMQP_AUTHENTICATION_REQUIRED
--hono.amqp.authenticationRequired
no true If set to true the protocol adapter requires devices to authenticate when connecting to the adapter. The credentials provided by the device are verified using the configured Credentials Service. Devices that have failed to authenticate are not allowed to publish any data.
HONO_AMQP_BIND_ADDRESS
--hono.amqp.bindAddress
no 127.0.0.1 The IP address of the network interface that the secure port should be bound to.
See Port Configuration below for details.
HONO_AMQP_CERT_PATH
--hono.amqp.certPath
no - The absolute path to the PEM file containing the certificate that the protocol adapter should use for authenticating to clients. This option must be used in conjunction with HONO_AMQP_KEY_PATH.
Alternatively, the HONO_AMQP_KEY_STORE_PATH option can be used to configure a key store containing both the key as well as the certificate.
HONO_AMQP_DEFAULTS_ENABLED
--hono.amqp.defaultsEnabled
no true If set to true the protocol adapter uses default values registered for a device to augment messages published by the device with missing information like a content type. In particular, the protocol adapter adds default values registered for the device as (application) properties with the same name to the AMQP 1.0 messages it sends downstream to the AMQP Messaging Network.
HONO_AMQP_IDLE_TIMEOUT
--hono.amqp.idleTimeout
no 60000 The time interval (milliseconds) to wait for incoming traffic from a device before the connection should be considered stale and thus be closed. Setting this property to 0 prevents the adapter from detecting and closing stale connections.
HONO_AMQP_SEND_MESSAGE_TO_DEVICE_TIMEOUT
--hono.amqp.sendMessageToDeviceTimeout
no 1000 The time interval (milliseconds) to wait for a device to acknowledge receiving a (command) message before the AMQP link used for sending the message will be closed. Setting this property to 0 means the adapter waits indefinitely for a device to acknowledge receiving the message.
HONO_AMQP_INSECURE_PORT_BIND_ADDRESS
--hono.amqp.insecurePortBindAddress
no 127.0.0.1 The IP address of the network interface that the insecure port should be bound to.
See Port Configuration below for details.
HONO_AMQP_INSECURE_PORT
--hono.amqp.insecurePort
no 5672 The port number that the protocol adapter should listen on for insecure connections.
See Port Configuration below for details.
HONO_AMQP_INSECURE_PORT_ENABLED
--hono.amqp.insecurePortEnabled
no false If set to true the protocol adapter will open an insecure port (not secured by TLS) using either the port number set via HONO_AMQP_INSECURE_PORT or the default AMQP port number (1883) if not set explicitly.
See Port Configuration below for details.
HONO_AMQP_KEY_PATH
--hono.amqp.keyPath
no - The absolute path to the (PKCS8) PEM file containing the private key that the protocol adapter should use for authenticating to clients. This option must be used in conjunction with HONO_AMQP_CERT_PATH. Alternatively, the HONO_AMQP_KEY_STORE_PATH option can be used to configure a key store containing both the key as well as the certificate.
HONO_AMQP_KEY_STORE_PASSWORD
--hono.amqp.keyStorePassword
no - The password required to read the contents of the key store.
HONO_AMQP_KEY_STORE_PATH
--hono.amqp.keyStorePath
no - The absolute path to the Java key store containing the private key and certificate that the protocol adapter should use for authenticating to clients. Either this option or the HONO_AMQP_KEY_PATH and HONO_AMQP_CERT_PATH options need to be set in order to enable TLS secured connections with clients. The key store format can be either JKS or PKCS12 indicated by a .jks or .p12 file suffix respectively.
HONO_AMQP_SNI
--hono.amqp.sni
no false Set whether the server supports Server Name Indication. By default, the server will not support SNI and the option is false. However, if set to true then the key store format, HONO_AMQP_KEY_STORE_PATH, should be either JKS or PKCS12 indicated by a .jks or .p12 file suffix respectively.
HONO_AMQP_MAX_CONNECTIONS
--hono.amqp.maxConnections
no 0 The maximum number of concurrent connections that the protocol adapter should accept. If not set (or set to 0), the protocol adapter determines a reasonable value based on the available resources like memory and CPU.
HONO_AMQP_MAX_FRAME_SIZE
--hono.amqp.maxFrameSize
no 16384 The maximum size (in bytes) of a single AMQP frame that the adapter should accept from the device. When a device sends a bigger frame, the connection will be closed.
HONO_AMQP_MAX_PAYLOAD_SIZE
--hono.amqp.maxPayloadSize
no 2048 The maximum allowed size of an incoming AMQP message in bytes. When a client sends a message with a larger payload, the message is discarded and the link to the client is closed.
HONO_AMQP_MAX_SESSION_FRAMES
--hono.amqp.maxSessionFrames
no 30 The maximum number of AMQP transfer frames for sessions created on this connection. This is the number of transfer frames that may simultaneously be in flight for all links in the session.
HONO_AMQP_NATIVE_TLS_REQUIRED
--hono.amqp.nativeTlsRequired
no false The server will probe for OpenSSL on startup if a secure port is configured. By default, the server will fall back to the JVM’s default SSL engine if not available. However, if set to true, the server will fail to start at all in this case.
HONO_AMQP_PORT
--hono.amqp.port
no 5671 The secure port that the protocol adapter should listen on.
See Port Configuration below for details.
HONO_AMQP_SECURE_PROTOCOLS
--hono.amqp.secureProtocols
no TLSv1.3,TLSv1.2 A (comma separated) list of secure protocols (in order of preference) that are supported when negotiating TLS sessions. Please refer to the vert.x documentation for a list of supported protocol names.
HONO_AMQP_SUPPORTEDCIPHERSUITES
--hono.amqp.supportedCipherSuites
no - A (comma separated) list of names of cipher suites (in order of preference) that the adapter may use in TLS sessions with devices. Please refer to JSSE Cipher Suite Names for a list of supported names.
HONO_AMQP_TENANT_IDLE_TIMEOUT
--hono.amqp.tenantIdleTimeout
no 0ms The duration after which the protocol adapter removes local state of the tenant (e.g. open AMQP links) with an amount and a unit, e.g. 2h for 2 hours. See the Spring Boot documentation for an explanation of the format. The value 0ms disables the timeout.
HONO_APP_MAX_INSTANCES
--hono.app.maxInstances
no #CPU cores The number of verticle instances to deploy. If not set, one verticle per processor core is deployed.

The variables only need to be set if the default values do not match your environment.

Port Configuration

The AMQP protocol adapter can be configured to listen for connections on

  • a secure port only (default) or
  • an insecure port only or
  • both a secure and an insecure port (dual port configuration)

The AMQP protocol adapter will fail to start if none of the ports is configured properly.

Secure Port Only

The protocol adapter needs to be configured with a private key and certificate in order to open a TLS secured port.

There are two alternative ways for doing so:

  1. either setting the HONO_AMQP_KEY_STORE_PATH and the HONO_AMQP_KEY_STORE_PASSWORD variables in order to load the key & certificate from a password protected key store, or
  2. setting the HONO_AMQP_KEY_PATH and HONO_AMQP_CERT_PATH variables in order to load the key and certificate from two separate PEM files in PKCS8 format.

When starting up, the protocol adapter will bind a TLS secured socket to the default secure port 5671. The port number can also be set explicitly using the HONO_AMQP_PORT variable.

The HONO_AMQP_BIND_ADDRESS variable can be used to specify the network interface that the port should be exposed on. By default the port is bound to the loopback device only, i.e. the port will only be accessible from the local host. Setting this variable to 0.0.0.0 will let the port being bound to all network interfaces (be careful not to expose the port unintentionally to the outside world).

Insecure Port Only

The secure port will mostly be required for production scenarios. However, it might be desirable to expose a non-TLS secured port instead, e.g. for testing purposes. In any case, the non-secure port needs to be explicitly enabled either by

  • explicitly setting HONO_AMQP_INSECURE_PORT to a valid port number, or by
  • implicitly configuring the default adapter port (5672) by simply setting HONO_AMQP_INSECURE_PORT_ENABLED to true.

The protocol adapter issues a warning on the console if HONO_AMQP_INSECURE_PORT is set to the default secure port (5671) used by the adapter for secure connections.

The HONO_AMQP_INSECURE_PORT_BIND_ADDRESS variable can be used to specify the network interface that the port should be exposed on. By default the port is bound to the loopback device only, i.e. the port will only be accessible from the local host. This variable might be used to e.g. expose the non-TLS secured port on a local interface only, thus providing easy access from within the local network, while still requiring encrypted communication when accessed from the outside over public network infrastructure.

Setting this variable to 0.0.0.0 will let the port being bound to all network interfaces (be careful not to expose the port unintentionally to the outside world).

Dual Port

The protocol adapter may be configured to open both a secure and a non-secure port at the same time simply by configuring both ports as described above. For this to work, both ports must be configured to use different port numbers, otherwise startup will fail.

Ephemeral Ports

Both the secure as well as the insecure port numbers may be explicitly set to 0. The protocol adapter will then use arbitrary (unused) port numbers determined by the operating system during startup.