[zeromq-dev] Will socket multiplexing improve throughput?

[William Brown]

	We're using the multiple-socket model in our work. We've abstracted out several
	of the major "topologies" that ZeroMQ supports into a higher level application
	library. Each of these topologies essentially supports one-way, asynchronous
	transmissions. Round trip request/response messaging is accomplished using transactionIDs
	that are part of the message payload. Clients transmit message payloads on one socket
	topology and eventually receive a response to that message on another socket topology. 
	The transactionID helps to correlate the original request with the proper response. We've 
	also extended the payload model to include the concept of routing documents. This allows 
	for a single request to be routed through multiple service implementations before the final 
	result is returned to the original caller. This allows for excellent separation of concerns 
	across components.

	The reason we went this route is because of the complexities of two-way communications
	using a single socket and all of the synchronization headaches that go along with it. 

	--Corey

-----Original Message-----
From: zeromq-dev-bounces at lists.zeromq.org [mailto:zeromq-dev-bounces at lists.zeromq.org] On Behalf Of Staffan Gimåker
Sent: Tuesday, February 07, 2012 5:15 AM
To: ZeroMQ development list
Subject: Re: [zeromq-dev] Will socket multiplexing improve throughput?

On Tue, 2012-02-07 at 10:01 +0800, Qing Yan wrote:
> Hi,
>    I have a general question about zmq. Say my goal is to gain max 
> throughtput between two nodes. Is there advantge to establish multiple 
> sockets between them, or one pair is enough and ZMQ will take care of 
> the optimization?
> Assuming the data source is multithreaded
> 1) create one socket pair + synchronized access
> 2) one pair for each thread w/o synchronization How much better will 
> 2) compare to 1)?Is it worth the complexity?

If ZeroMQ is the bottleneck, i.e. not the data source itself, then 2) will fare better, for two reasons:

 * No synchronization.
 * Each zmq socket is limited to one io thread (correct me if I'm wrong).

If you use multiple sockets you can utilize multiple io threads, which should give you better throughput.

How much better it will be (it depends) or whether or not it's worth the effort (can't see why it should be much more effort) I will refrain from speculating about.

/S

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