Hands-On Reactive Programming in Spring 5

RSocket versus Reactor-Netty

At first glance, RSocket does not seem very innovative; nowadays, we already have web servers such as RxNetty or Reactor-Netty (the default WebFlux wrapper for Netty). These solutions offer APIs (which allow reading or writing from/to the network) built on top of reactive streams types, implying backpressure support. However, the only issue with that kind of backpressure is that it works in isolation. Subsequently, this means that proper backpressure support is wired only between the component and the network.

For example, using Reactor-Netty, we can consume incoming bytes only when we are ready to do so. Similarly, the network's readiness is exposed as the Subscription#request method calls. The central problem ...