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title: Nanomsg
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== About Nanomsg

NOTE: The latest release of nanomsg is {{ site.latest }}.

*_nanomsg_* is a socket library that provides several common communication
patterns.
It aims to make the networking layer fast, scalable, and easy to use.
Implemented in C, it works on a wide range of operating systems with no further
dependencies.

TIP: A new project, https://github.com/nanomsg/nng[_nng_], is underway
as reimplementation of these same protocols.
_nng_ is wire compatible with _nanomsg_, and offers a number of additional
advanced capabilities.
Although _nng_ itself is still in pre-release state, we are encouraging
people using or considering using _nanomsg_ to look at _nng_.

The communication patterns, also called "scalability protocols", are basic
blocks for building distributed systems.
By combining them you can create a vast array of distributed applications.
The following scalability protocols are currently available:

* PAIR - simple one-to-one communication
* BUS - simple many-to-many communication
* REQREP - allows to build clusters of stateless services to process user requests
* PUBSUB - distributes messages to large sets of interested subscribers
* PIPELINE - aggregates messages from multiple sources and load balances them among many destinations
* SURVEY - allows to query state of multiple applications in a single go

Scalability protocols are layered on top of the transport layer in the network
stack.
At the moment, the _nanomsg_ library supports the following transports
mechanisms:

* INPROC - transport within a process (between threads, modules etc.)
* IPC - transport between processes on a single machine
* TCP - network transport via TCP
* WS - websockets over TCP

The library exposes a BSD-socket-like C API to the applications.

It is licensed under the
https://github.com/nanomsg/nanomsg/blob/master/COPYING[MIT/X11 license].