# Quick Start

EMQX Edge is a lightweight and blazing-fast MQTT broker designed for IoT edge environments. This guide walks you through how to quickly install EMQX Edge and explore its core messaging capabilities, including client connections, publishing/subscribing messages, and using the built-in Dashboard for monitoring and management.

## Install and Start EMQX Edge

Install and start the EMQX Edge by following the instructions in [Installation](../installation/packages.md). With EMQX Edge now running, it exposes the following ports by default:

- **1883** for standard MQTT traffic
- **8083** for MQTT over WebSocket
- **8883** for secure MQTT over SSL/TLS
- **8081** for the Web-based Dashboard UI

## Experience the EMQX Edge Messaging Services

This section walks you through how to use the MQTTX client tool to connect to EMQX Edge and interact with its messaging services. MQTTX can be used to simulate one or more MQTT clients, enabling you to test publishing, subscribing, and receiving messages via EMQX Edge.

### Set Up MQTTX

You can download and install MQTTX from the [official website](https://mqttx.app/). Once installed, launch the MQTTX application.

### Connect to EMQX Edge

1. On the MQTTX home screen, click **New Connection**. In the **General** pane, configure the following settings:

   ![Connect to NanoMQ](./assets/connect-nanomq.png)

   - **Name**: Enter a name for your connection.
   - **Client ID**: Automatically generated by MQTTX (you can leave it as-is).
   - **Host**: Use `mqtt://localhost` (or replace `localhost` with your actual IP address).
   - **Port**: Enter `1883` (or another port based on your setup).

2. Click **Connect** in the top-right corner. Upon a successful connection, a confirmation indicator will appear.

### Subscribe to a Topic

1. Click **+ New Subscription**.
2. Specify the topic to subscribe to (e.g., `test/topic`). Default settings can be left unchanged.
3. Click **Confirm** to subscribe.

### Publish a Message

1. In the publish section of MQTTX, enter the topic you want to publish to (e.g., `test/topic`).
2. Type your message payload (e.g., `"Hello EMQX"`).
3. Click the **Send** icon to publish the message.

The message will appear in the dialog area, confirming it was successfully published and received by the subscriber through EMQX Edge.

![Pub/Sub](./assets/mqttx.png)

### View Client Information in Dashboard

Access the EMQX Edge Dashboard by opening a web browser and visiting `http://localhost:8081` (`localhost` can be substituted with your IP address).

On the **Monitor** page in the Edge Dashboard, click the **Clients** tab, and you can see the client connection information. Switch to the **Subscription** tab, and you can see the subscribed topic and QoS.

![dashboard_client](./assets/dashboard_sub.png)

## What's Next

After testing basic publish/subscribe, explore more core features of EMQX Edge:

- **Secure Client Access**
  Learn how to configure [Authentication](../security/authentication) and [Authorization](../security/authorization.md) to control client access and enforce security policies.
- **Bridge Messages to a Remote MQTT Broker**
  Create an [MQTT over TCP Bridge](../bridges/tcp-bridge.md) to forward and receive messages between EMQX Edge and a remote MQTT broker, enabling edge-to-cloud integration.