A Lightweight Hybrid Publish/Subscribe Event Fabric for IPC and Modular Distributed Systems
2026-03-31 • Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster ComputingSoftware Engineering
AI summaryⓘ
The authors developed CNS, a messaging system designed for small computing units working together in controlled networks. CNS helps different parts of software communicate quickly within a single machine and also send messages across multiple machines in a structured way. It uses a simple publish-and-subscribe model with typed events, and moves messages between local and distributed contexts without confusion. Their tests show CNS is fast and adds only a little delay when checking messages. This system is useful for organizing communication inside modular software and between connected nodes.
Inter-process communicationPublish/subscribeSerializationEvent-driven architectureNATSFire-and-forget messagingHybrid messagingDistributed systemsIPC routingValidation overhead
Authors
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.