Choosing a Transport Mode

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When you configure the TCP transport, you must choose one of the following types of communication:

TCP over LAN — Communication between the two peers is not encrypted (data is written directly to a TCP socket). Each node can use all the possible interfaces available on that machine to receive connections. The node can only receive connections from machines that are on a local LAN.
TCP over WAN — Communication is not encrypted (data is written directly to a TCP socket). The node can only receive connections from a specific port, which must be configured in the public router of the local network (WAN mode).
TLS over LAN — This is similar to the TCP over LAN, where the node can use all the available network interfaces to TX/RX data (LAN nodes only), but in this mode, the data being written on the physical socket is encrypted first (through the openssl library). Performance (throughput and latency) may be less than TCP over LAN since the data needs to be encrypted before going on the wire. Discovery time may be longer with this mode because when the first connection is established, the two peers exchange handshake information to ensure line protection. For more general information on TLS, see Datagram Transport-Layer Security (DTLS).
TLS over WAN — The data is encrypted just like TLS over LAN, but it can be sent and received only from a specific port of the router.

Note: To use either TLS mode, you also need RTI TLS Support, which is available for purchase as a separate package.

An instance of the transport can only communicate with other nodes that use the same transport mode.

You can specify the transport mode in either the NDDS_Transport_TCPv4_Property_t structure (see TCP/TLS Transport Properties) or in the parent.classid field of the Properties QoS (see Configuring the TCP Transport with the Property QosPolicy). Your choice of transport mode will also be reflected in the prefix you use for setting the initial peers (see Setting the Initial Peers).