Jetnet

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Jetnet is the proprietary protocol that Paradigm R&D Corporation Ltd. (P:rd) products use to communicate with each other.

1 Overview
2 Advantages
3 Disadvantages
4 Uses in P:rd products
5 See also

[edit] Overview

Jetnet is a UDP/IP-based protocol that uses port 6543 by default. Jetnet is used by all P:rd products including TAPS, NODE and Converse. Jetnet was created to enable an application to operate in a distributed fashion across a homogeneous network of machines. Jetnet messages are XDR-encoded to enable this. Ports exist for MS Windows, HP-UX, AIX and Solaris.

At the centre of a Jetnet-based system is the Despatch Manager (DM). This is the single point through which the various elements communicate and as such is a single point of failure for a Jetnet-based system. On startup, elements register the list of messages that they can respond to with the DM. The DM has built-in capability to queue and resend messages in the event of a failures, but the elements also need to be able to handle the case where they send a message but never receive a response. A Jetnet API exists to allow developers to create Jetnet-enabled applications.

Jetnet messages take two main forms:

Requests: An element effectively asks a question by sending a message to the DM and the DM forwards it, in a round-robin fashion onto the next element that can handle that Request. A Request may or may not require a Response.
Responses: An element responds to a Request and the DM forwards the response back.

[edit] Advantages

Jetnet works best when the workload to be achieved can be spread amongst a network of machines without caring who does what i.e. logically independent tasks.
Jetnet is lightweight (in terms of its memory footprint) and CPU utilisation. The Jetnet code is designed (in a similar way to many grid-type applications) to make use of spare CPU cycles on machines.

[edit] Disadvantages

Jetnet works less well when two specific elements need to communicate with each other. In this case, the DM is superfluous and is simply proxying messages.
Jetnet also works less well when a single element is the focus of a lot of messages. In this case, it again is really just a proxy and it makes more sense for the elements to communicate directly.

[edit] Uses in P:rd products

TAPS uses Jetnet to distribute the processing of large data sets such as telephone call detail records (CDRs). Each element is allocated a set of call records to enrich and rate.
NODE uses Jetnet to distribute the creation of reports, such as customer telephone bills (each processing element is allocated a group of bills to produce).
CONVERSE uses Jetnet to distribute the real time collection and communication with a network element such as a switch (commonly used for Least Cost Routing and CDR collection).