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A Lightweight Hybrid Publish/Subscribe Event Fabric for IPC and Modular Distributed Systems

Dimitris Gkoulis

Abstract

Modular software deployed on mini compute units in controlled distributed environments often needs two messaging paths: low-overhead in-process coordination and selective cross-node distribution. In practice, event identity, serialization, and transport bridging are frequently implemented as ad hoc glue, which complicates inter-process communication (IPC), structured routing, and shutdown behavior. This paper presents CNS, a lightweight local-first hybrid event fabric centered on asynchronous fire-and-forget messaging. CNS combines a typed event key, per-family serialization and validation, a local publish/subscribe context for in-process coordination, and a NATS-backed distributed context for inter-node distribution. A bridge runtime moves events between the two contexts while preserving a common routing vocabulary. The primary operating model is fire-and-forget publication and subscription; bidirectional request-reply remains available as a secondary extension on the same subject space. A Python prototype and single-machine measurements are reported. Local-only delivery averaged about 30 $μ$s. Distributed-only delivery averaged 1.26-1.37 ms, and the hybrid bridge averaged 1.64-1.89 ms. Validation introduced modest overhead relative to serialization choice. The resulting artifact is suited to structured IPC and practical message movement within modular services and across bounded sets of controlled nodes.

A Lightweight Hybrid Publish/Subscribe Event Fabric for IPC and Modular Distributed Systems

Abstract

Modular software deployed on mini compute units in controlled distributed environments often needs two messaging paths: low-overhead in-process coordination and selective cross-node distribution. In practice, event identity, serialization, and transport bridging are frequently implemented as ad hoc glue, which complicates inter-process communication (IPC), structured routing, and shutdown behavior. This paper presents CNS, a lightweight local-first hybrid event fabric centered on asynchronous fire-and-forget messaging. CNS combines a typed event key, per-family serialization and validation, a local publish/subscribe context for in-process coordination, and a NATS-backed distributed context for inter-node distribution. A bridge runtime moves events between the two contexts while preserving a common routing vocabulary. The primary operating model is fire-and-forget publication and subscription; bidirectional request-reply remains available as a secondary extension on the same subject space. A Python prototype and single-machine measurements are reported. Local-only delivery averaged about 30 s. Distributed-only delivery averaged 1.26-1.37 ms, and the hybrid bridge averaged 1.64-1.89 ms. Validation introduced modest overhead relative to serialization choice. The resulting artifact is suited to structured IPC and practical message movement within modular services and across bounded sets of controlled nodes.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 21 sections, 1 figure, 4 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Design Goals and Scope
  3. Architecture
  4. Event Model
  5. Local publish/subscribe context
  6. Distributed asynchronous context
  7. Bridge runtime
  8. Bounded bidirectional communication
  9. Specialization pattern
  10. Prototype Implementation
  11. Evaluation Methodology
  12. Results
  13. Experimental setting
  14. End-to-end latency
  15. Throughput
  16. ...and 6 more sections

Figures (1)

  • Figure 1: Local-first hybrid event fabric spanning local IPC and distributed transport. Each node contains a local publish/subscribe context, a bridge runtime, and a NATS-backed asynchronous context. Events share one typed routing vocabulary across local and distributed paths.