[zeromq-dev] Comment on ZRE spec flaw

[Pieter Hintjens]

On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 10:29 AM, Michael Haberler <mail17 at mah.priv.at> wrote:

> First, it is unclear what the 'joined' status actually means, since that isnt defined. If I assume 'joined' means '2-way communication is possible with this node', then the method outlined fails to ascertain that property consistently across nodes.

The spec doesn't use the term "join" for node presence; only for group
participation. There's no such concept as "joined status".

What there is is each node's view of the network as a set of peers it
can probably send messages to. What this means in fact is that for
each such peer, the node will have an outgoing buffer that it can
write (something) to. The actual connection may happen later, or
never. The buffer may overflow. The peer may disappear again. All
these things happen in real networks. it's also quite normal that
peers have different views of each other, so A can see B but B cannot
see A, until A sends it something (typical when UDP beacons get
dropped).

Does that help?

If you think the spec needs more explanation I can add it.

-Pieter