BUS Protocol
The BUS protocol provides for building mesh networks where every peer is connected to every other peer. In this protocol, each message sent by a node is sent to every one of its directly connected peers.
tip
Messages are only sent to directly connected peers. This means that in the event that a peer is connected indirectly, it will not receive messages. When using this protocol to build mesh networks, it is therefore important that a fully-connected mesh network be constructed.
All message delivery in this pattern is best-effort, which means that peers may not receive messages. Furthermore, delivery may occur to some, all, or none of the directly connected peers. (Messages are not delivered when peer nodes are unable to receive.) Hence, send operations will never block; instead if the message cannot be delivered for any reason it is discarded.
tip
In order to minimize the likelihood of message loss, this protocol should not be used for high throughput communications. Furthermore, the more traffic in aggregate that occurs across the topology, the more likely that message loss is to occur.
Socket Operations
The nng_bus0_open functions create a bus socket.
This socket may be used to send and receive messages.
Sending messages will attempt to deliver to each directly connected peer.
Protocol Versions
Only version 0 of this protocol is supported. (At the time of writing, no other versions of this protocol have been defined.)
Protocol Options
The BUS protocol has no protocol-specific options.
Protocol Headers
When using a BUS socket in raw mode, received messages will contain the incoming pipe ID as the sole element in the header. If a message containing such a header is sent using a raw BUS socket, then, the message will be delivered to all connected pipes except the one identified in the header. This behavior is intended for use with device configurations consisting of just a single socket. Such configurations are useful in the creation of rebroadcasters, and this capability prevents a message from being routed back to its source. If no header is present, then a message is sent to all connected pipes.
When using normal (cooked mode) BUS sockets, no message headers are present.