[zeromq-dev] question on socket types for my app
Marc Ilgen
marc at westofpluto.com
Sun Jul 17 09:56:26 CEST 2011
I'm trying to figure out the best way to set this up in 0mq and I'm not
quite sure which architectural choice is best. I'd love to get some advice.
I'm building a system consisting of a server process on a well known machine
(ie with a known domain or ip address) and one or more client processes that
can be on home computers, so they may be on connections without a known or
constant ip address, behind firewalls, etc. My server process must
asynchronously communicate with my clients. These server-to-client
broadcasts may occur only a couple of times per day, but the client must
process this message instantly and perform some actions on the client
computer instantly. Furthermore, the client must respond instantly to the
server to acknowledge that the client has received and processed this
specific message.
As an example, think of a trading advisory system that sends out buy/sell
trade signals. No one knows in advance when the server will send these
signals (the signals depend on current market conditions), but when the
server computes that a signal must be sent, it sends it and the client
computers must process these trade signals instantly on their end, say by
executing trades on the client's account.
So here is the problem. This is not a normal client/server REQ/REP model
where the client initiates conversations. It is the server that needs to
initiate the conversation (send messages asynchronously). But the client
does not have a known IP address for the server to bind to. Furthermore,
this is not a PUB/SUB model because the subscriber (the client) must respond
back to the server to tell the server that it received this specific
message.
So there are two possible ways I can implement this. The first way is to
have a client/server model where the client sends short data requests
constantly, perhaps several times per second. The client is essentially
blasting the server with "is there any data yet" messages and the server is
constantly replying "no, no, no". A couple of times a day the server will
have an actual response "yes here is some real data" and then will expect
the server to acknowledge receipt of that real data. This seems like a waste
of bandwidth to me.
A second approach would be to use two sockets. One is a PUB/SUB socket where
the server sends out its twice a day messages and the client gets those
messages over a SUB socket. Since the client cannot respond over that sub
socket, there is a second REQ/REP socket set up. When the client gets its
SUB message, it then sends an acknowledgement over the REQ socket back to
the server. This seems like it would work, but I'm not convinced it is the
most elegant approach.
Is there a more elegant solution to this problem in ZeroMQ?
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Marc Ilgen
marc at westofpluto.com
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