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 --