[erlang-patches] Add net_kernel and epmd support for multiple simultaneous distributed transport protocols

[Geoff Cant]

On 2014-01-09, at 07:53 , Kenneth Lundin <kenneth.lundin@REDACTED> wrote:

> ...
> 
> 
> General thoughts
> -----------------------
> 
> Enhancing/extending the Erlang distribution to support heterogenous communication protocols is something we have discussed many times and it is something that we really would like to have.
> 
> 1) We would like a plugin architecture where different transport protocols can be easily plugged in without having to change the basic Erlang distribution or the VM.
> 
> 2) It should be possible to run different protocols towards different nodes
> 
> 3) should be possible to have different timeouts (NET_TICK_TIME) per connection
> 
> 4) interesting protocols would be UDS, TCP, TLS over TCP, SCTP, ...
> 
> 5) it should be possible to look up nodes in different ways and maybe not only via contacting epmd on the host name which is part of the node name. I.e having the hostname as part of the node name is not always what you want, depending on protocol to use.
> 
> ....
> 

I would like to add one general thought / principle to guide improvements to ERTS's distribution machinery:

'It should be possible to implement distribution protocols in Erlang'

(The current setup requires us to implement complicated network protocols in C, which I find just about unbearable when Erlang is close at hand)

Cheers,
--
Geoff Cant