[nanomsg] Re: The name service for nanomsg

  • From: Nico Williams <nico@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: Martin Sustrik <sustrik@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sun, 8 Sep 2013 17:58:08 -0500

On Sat, Sep 7, 2013 at 12:51 AM, Martin Sustrik <sustrik@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> As an analogy, I would say pub/sub subscriptions basically work as IGMP.

Yes.

> As for the name service (btw, we should think of a better name for the
> thign) the analogy is more like a network admin running around with cables,
> plugging in switches etc.
>
> The core difference being that the former is fully automatic, while the
> latter is fully human-driven.

The degree of automation that can be obtained could be quite high: all
that's needed is to be able to determine how to join the group given
its URI/address (in either pub, sub, and/or router roles), and how to
authenticate and authorize membership.  The hard part is the latter.
Well, having higher-layer topologies match lower layer topologies is
also non-trivial, but if you manage to automatically match lower-layer
topology automatically then the only administration problems left
relate to authentication and authorization.

I think the two problems should be attacked separately.  For
authentication and authorization the easiest thing to do as first is
nothing.  As for matching network topology, I'm not sure what to
suggest.  One possibility would be to have a binding to IP multicast:
leave it to IP and IGMP, but this can't be the only option.  Maybe
querying BGP/IGP route reflectors?

(A third problem is data integrity protection, mentioned on IRC, but
that's best left for another day for now.)

Nico
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