Does WAMP messaging have to route messages through a broker?

Question

I've been reviewing Websockets messaging protocols. Looking at WAMP, it has the basic features I want. But in reading the docs, it appears that it requires a messages to route through the broker. Is this correct?

I am looking for real time messaging. While the broker role may be useful as a means of bringing together the publishers and subscribers, I would want the broker to only negotiate the connection, then hand-off sockets/IPs to the parties - allowing direct routing between the involved parties without requiring the broker to manage all the real time messaging. Can WAMP do this?

Answer 1

Two WebSocket clients (e.g. browsers) cannot talk directly to each other. So there will be an intermediary involved in any case.

WAMP is for real-time messaging. To be precise, WebSocket is for soft real-time. There are no hard real-time guarantees in any TCP based protocol running over networks.

Regarding publish & subscribe: a broker is always required, since it is exactly this part which decouples publishers and subscribers. If publisher would be directly connected to subscribers (not possible with 2 WebSocket client anyway, but ..), then you would introduce coupling. But decoupling a main point of doing PubSub anyway.

What exactly is your concern with having a broker (PubSub) or a dealer (RPC) being involved? Latency?