ZeroMQ

Intermediaries and Proxies

ØMQ aims for decentralized intelligence, but that doesn’t mean your network is empty space in the middle. It’s filled with message-aware infrastructure, and quite often, you build that infrastructure with ØMQ. The ØMQ plumbing can range from tiny pipes to full-blown service-oriented brokers. The messaging industry calls this intermediation, meaning that the stuff in the middle deals with either side. In ØMQ, we call these proxies, queues, forwarders, devices, or brokers, depending on the context.

This pattern is extremely common in the real world and is why our societies and economies are filled with intermediaries who have no other real function than to reduce the complexity and scaling costs of larger networks. Real-world intermediaries are typically called wholesalers, distributors, managers, and so on.