Chapter 1. Features
AMQ Interconnect 1.0 represents the initial offering of this component as part of a complete messaging solution. Deploying an interconnect router (or network of routers) provides the following benefits over using brokers alone:
- Operating modes
- The interconnect component can operate in stand-alone mode or interior mode.
- Brokerless messaging
- Direct, brokerless messaging when broker queueing is not needed. This feature is useful for request-response/RPC patterns.
- Anycast or Multicast
- Direct delivery can be configured as multicast (all subscribers receive a copy of each produced message) or anycast (one subscriber receives a copy of each produced message).
- Inexpensive HA and resiliency
- High availability and resiliency for the network does not require high-cost clustering; it is achieved through redundant topologies much like one would use in deploying an IP network.
- Scale up queues and topics
- A messaging system including interconnect can offer a greater number of queues and topics than can be offered by a single broker or a cluster of brokers.
- Queue/topic distribution
- A single queue or topic can be distributed across multiple brokers to provide increased user scale and throughput.
- Security
- Access to a broker can be secured, hardened, and limited. In addition, the broker does not need to be deployed in a client-facing DMZ (De-Militarized Zone in front of a firewall).
- Encryption
- Connections between clients and a broker or a broker and another broker can be secured by using SSLTLS (Secure Socket Layer Top Level Specification) or SASL (Simple Authentication and Security Layer) at the interconnect level to encrypt the connections.
- Elasticity
- Brokers can be added and removed to handle changes in load or to accommodate broker maintenance.
- Multi-tenancy
- Queues, topics, and destinations can be partitioned by user/application/account such that multiple users can use the same messaging infrastructure without interfering with each other.
Refer to the Apache QPid Dispatch Router project for additional information: http://qpid.apache.org/components/dispatch-router/index.html
