In the Works — RSocket on Alibaba

We’ve got a number of interesting pilot projects in the works, including one with Alibaba with a lot of promise.

We’re doing integration work to make the Netifi Broker (powered by RSocket) available from the Alibaba cloud. That would be ideal for network-intensive applications like running microservices, or connecting Internet of Things (IoT), or a mobile gateway that takes advantage of edge computing with real-time communications to mobile devices.

By building on RSocket support in the Spring framework, developers can easily deploy these advanced applications on the Alibaba cloud platform.

RSocket is an open source protocol for multiplexed streams, comparable to gRPC in terms of interaction models, but transport independent and with protocol-level support for Reactive Streams back pressure, among other unique features. The Netifi broker is built atop Reactive Streams and RSocket and facilitates communication between client and server applications — including mobile devices, web browsers, and microservices in the cloud–wherever they are located, as though they had a point-to-point connection. A broker accepts connections from these applications, and then routes their messages or data streams to their intended destinations.

The open-source RSocket network protocol is designed to handle the challenges of communication between complex networks of services both within the data center and over the internet — extending to mobile devices and browsers.

The Netifi broker

Features

• Ultra-low latency bi-directional streaming that predicts the best route to send messages understanding latency and error rates
• Transport independent (TCP, WebSocket, HTTP/2, Aeron)
• Integrated access control that allows for the same security model to be applied across any deployment topology (cloud, multi-cloud, on-prem, hybrid)
• Session resumption, application flow control and predictive load balancing to protect both client and server resources from being overwhelmed
• Multi-language client and server support
• Built-in metrics capture with automatic export to Prometheus

We’ll keep you posted on progress and when RSocket support is added to Alibaba’s cloud. Expect that sooner than later and in time for the SpringOne Platform conference.