[zeromq-dev] Considering ZeroMQ for carrier grade AAA services

[Michael Andersen]

We are considering using ZeroMQ for in-process thread management and as 
communication layer between network distributed processes in our new 
product for AAA services in internet provider environments.

The implications of this are:
1. 24/7 operation with thousands of transactions per second per server
2. Servers geographically distributed on "hostile" networks (e.g. 
firewalls dropping all packets for TCP connections that have been active 
for more than a few hours - in the name of security)
3. Massively parallel Oracle/Sun servers (Coolthreads, 100+ CPUs seen by 
OS/Application) running Solaris



In this context I have two important questions I would like to post to 
the community:

1. Do you have any knowledge or ideas about how ZeroMQ would scale on 
massively parallel architectures such as Sun Coolthreads based servers?

2. How well does ZeroMQ handle when TCP connections are no longer as 
reliable as they are supposed to according to the standards? - as an 
example: how would ZeroMQ handle the situation when a _seemingly_ valid 
TCP connection is not returning an expected response?
  - are there cases where ZeroMQ would wait silently?
  - is there a way to make ZeroMQ send regular keep-alive through its 
TCP connections?


Best Regards,

Michael Andersen
Broadband Systems ApS