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PUBSUB-Admin UDP Multicast

Description

This description is particular for the UDP-Multicast PUB-SUB.

The UDP multicast pubsub admin is used to transfer user data transparent via UDP multicast. UDP packets can contain approximately
64kB . To overcome this limit the admin has a protocol on top of UDP which fragments the data to be send and these
fragments are reassembled at the reception side.

IP Addresses

To use UDP-multicast 2 IP addresses are needed:

  1. IP address which is bound to an (ethernet) interface
  2. The multicast address (in the range 224.X.X.X - 239.X.X.X)

When the PubSubAdmin starts it determines the bound IP address. This is done in the order:

  1. The first IP number bound to the interface which is set by the “PSA_INTERFACE” property
  2. The interfaces are iterated and the first IP number found is used. (typically this is 127.0.0.1 (localhost)

The multicast IP address is determined in the order:

  1. If the PSA_IP property is defined, this IP will be used as multicast.
  2. If the PSA_MC_PREFIX property, is defined, this property is used as the first 2 numbers of the multicast address extended with the last 2 numbers of the bound IP.
  3. If the PSA_MC_PREFIX property is not defined 224.100 is used.

Discovery

When a publisher request for a topic a TopicSender is created by a ServiceFactory. This TopicSender uses the multicast address as described above with a random chosen portnumber. The combination of the multicast-IP address with the portnumber and protocol(udp) is the endpoint.
This endpoint is published by the PubSubDiscovery within its topic in ETCD (i.e. udp://224.100.10.20:40123).

A subscriber, interested in the topic, is informed by the the TopologyManager that there is a new endpoint. The TopicReceiver at the subscriber side creates a listening socket based on this endpoint.

Now a data-connection is created and data send by the publisher will be received by the subscriber.

Properties

PropertyDescription
PSA_INTERFACEInterface which has to be used for multicast communication
PSA_IPMulticast IP address used by the bundle
PSA_MC_PREFIXFirst 2 digits of the MC IP address

Shortcomings

  1. Per topic a random portnr is used for creating an endpoint. It is theoretical possible that for 2 topic the same endpoint is created.
  2. For every message a 32 bit random message ID is generated to discriminate segments of different messages which could be sent at the same time. It is theoretically possible that there are 2 equal message ID’s at the same time. But since the message ID is valid only during the transmission of a message (maximum some milliseconds with large messages) this is not very plausible.
  3. When sending large messages, these messages are segmented and sent after each other. This could cause UDP-buffer overflows in the kernel. A solution could be to add a delay between sending of the segments but this will introduce extra latency.
  4. A Hash is created, using the message definition, to identify the message type. When 2 messages generate the same hash something will terribly go wrong. A check should be added to prevent this (or another way to identify the message type). This problem is also valid for the other admins.