KBUS Limpets - an introduction with goldfish

This is a metaphorical goldfish called A.

This is another metaphorical goldfishcalled B.

A and B live in a metaphorical goldfish bowl.

Each metaphorical goldfish bowl has a KBUS device in it - this bowl has KBUS device 0:

Here are the two fish in their bowl.

Metaphorical goldfish are simple creatures. They can only communicate with each other using KBUS messages.

Here is another metaphorical goldfish bowl. This one contains metaphorical goldfish called R and G. Their bowl has KBUS device 3.

Unfortunately, A and B cannot communicate with R and G. Even if the two metaphorical goldfish bowls are running on the same computer, KBUS does not permit sending KBUS messages between different KBUS devices.

Luckily, KBUS provides Limpets.

A Limpet lives on the side of a metaphorical goldfish bowl, and communicates with another Limpet on another metaphorical bowl.

Here we have Limpet 1 connected to a Ksock on KBUS device 0, and Limpet 2 connected to a Ksock on KBUS device 3:

Limpets always come in pairs. Each Limpet can proxy KBUS messages from the KBUS device in its metaphorical goldfish bowl to and from the other Limpet in its pair.

Think of them as using very low power line-of-sight lasers to send messages between each other.

So a pair of Limpets hide the fact that the two KBUS devices are not the same. This means that fish A and G can talk just as if they were in the same bowl:

 

To the metaphorical goldfish, it is as if the messages magically pass between the two KBUS devices, and thus A and B can communicate with R and G.

This mechanism even allows such communication if there are intermediate bowls:

---

A few more technical details.

KBUS Limpets are currently experimental, and have not been extensively tested yet. Limpet daemons are available in Python and C (which intercommunicate happily).

In order to keep Limpets and their implementation as simple as possible, we're willing to put up with some limitations:

1. We use TCP/IP or named sockets to communicate between Limpets,  which means one Limpet in each pair has to be a server, and thus started up first.
2. All Limpets on a connected network must have unique ids.
3. Limpets may not be used to form a network with loops in it. This greatly simplifies message management.
4. We assume a "safe" or trusted network - if it acts like a Limpet, it is a Limpet.
5. Finally, one cannot connect both ends of a Limpet pair to the same KBUS device (the same KBUS device number on different computers is OK, of course).