Bypassing the MQTT broker to connect directly with Kafka? You're gonna be completely missing the benefits of the MQTT/Kafka combo. You are supposed to connect your PLC to the MQTT broker for these reasons: - Low network bandwidth usage. Compared to modbus you'll save 75%-99.5%. - ONLY one out-bound port opened on your PLC - TLS security - Scale to millions of devices with one broker - Device-centric and devices are decoupled from consumers.