i need some advice. i do not yet grok the feng shui of zeromq,
and thus seek advice from those who do.

i have a fairly normal setup similiar to the parallel pipeline example in teh guide.
except that i have a handful of ventilators, and a handful of sinks.
so far, so good. we just use the PUSH/PULL pattern.

here is where it gets harder. i need to be able to essentially pause
the ventilators, adjust the number of workers and sinks, and then
unpause the ventilators WITHOUT losing any packets.

the best (!?) solution i have so far is

a) add a PUSH/PULL feedback socket (with all sinks and workers PUSH,
and the master is a PULL)
b) add a PUB/SUB command socket (with all ventilators, sinks and workers SUB,
and the master PUB)

c) we send an "IDLE" command to the ventilators; they pause their normal work
and start sending NO-OP work items
d) as each worker starts getting NO-OPs, they push a "LAZY" message to the master.
they orward the NO-OP to the sinks.
e) when the master sees k LAZY messages (where k is the existing number of workers), it rearranges teh workers (killing some or starting new ones). new workers send NO-OPs. f) when each sink starts getting NO-OPs, it sends a "LAZY" message to the master. g) when the master has done e), and seen NO-OPs from each of the j sinks, it rearranges the sinks. when each new sink starts getting NO-OPs, it send s a LAZY to teh master.

h) when the master receives m "LAZY"s (where m is the number of new sinks), it send an "GO" command to teh ventilators, who then stop sending NO-OPs and start sending real work.

-------------------------------------

pros: i believe this scheme will work. and the additional cost of two sockets is modest. cons: it is tedious to send NO-OPs, but i don't know how else to flush teh buffers and synchronise everyone. it does involve knowing how many things there are,
but that is part of an external configuration in any case.

is this the (or a) right way to do this? is there a better way?

        andrew

------------------
Andrew Hume  (best -> Telework) +1 732-886-1886
[email protected]  (Work) +1 973-360-8651
AT&T Labs - Research; member of USENIX and LOPSA



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