[zeromq-dev] What's in a name: DEVICE?

[Pieter Hintjens]

On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 11:24 AM, Martin Sustrik <sustrik at 250bpm.com> wrote:

>  From technical point of view, I think device is pretty suitable name.
> Say an Ethernet switch is a device for multicast transports.
>
>  From a theory of networking point of view the common terms are "node"
> (which includes endpoints such as 0MQ sockets), "intermediary" or
> "middlebox" which correspond to in-the-middle forwarding nodes.

I'd agree, "device" is consistent with treating the fabric as
stateless bricks that can be plugged together.

No single term really captures what is possible at this level, so I'd
suspect we have many kinds of "device", representing different kinds
of connectivity (broker vs. proxy), functionality (queue vs.
forwarder), and so on.

-Pieter