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Comment by bruth | Hacker News Reader

> Even with NATS jetstream, NATS has a focus on service communication.

It indeed excels at service communication as well. However, a core use case for NATS is the edge, be it your definition (browsers and mobile), but also in cars, factories, tractors, low-orbit satellites, etc, whether it is running on Kubernetes, k3s, or bare metal.

The issue you called out is a Firefox-specific issue, but it will be addressed and not indicative of an inherit limitation of NATS.

Check out this playlist of a live event I organized last fall with a variety of live demos: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgqCaaYodvKY6xRbvB6ffON0_...

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Currently, the only people I see talking about NATS for edge is Synadia - they're also not very specific. In theory/documentation, "edge" is a core NATS use case, but in practice why does NATS compare themselves to Kafka and microservices? Most of that playlist is not edge-focused. Can you explain what concepts and problems you have to solve to support the "edge" - none of that is in your website.

> The issue you called out is a Firefox-specific issue, but it will be addressed and not indicative of an inherit limitation of NATS.

My point is NATS is not being used in browsers, mobile apps or edge use cases. It doesn't even explore the concepts. It looks like it doesn't care about Firefox. For IoT, what does NATS bring on top of MQTT? NATS ends up being an MQTT broker so it will have to compete with all of them.

Why don't you start comparing yourself to products and technology that serve the edge (other edge-focused companies (ably, pusher, pubnub), and other MQTT brokers)?

Side note: Would appreciate it if you disclosed your affiliation with Synadia and NATS before advertising it.

> Would appreciate it if you disclosed your affiliation with Synadia and NATS before advertising it.

Fair point, but I did not mention Synadia. FWIW, I have been a NATS user for seven+ years prior to joining Synadia so I was speaking on behalf of myself and experience with the tech.

Also fair point that the nats.io website does not highlight this strongly. The NATS maintainers are aware (nearly all employed by Synadia) and we are working on it.

I disagree that simply because it is not advertised as a "edge" technology that it is not one of the best-in-class techs for edge. It simply means, we are doing a poor job at awareness.

> Why don't you start comparing yourself to products and technology that serve the edge

The vast majority of people and customers compare NATS to Kafka and the variety of variants out there. Once the push on edge occurs, I suspect comparison to these other tech will occur.

To be clear, I am not looking for a "winner" in this discussion, rather my original comment was to correct a gap in understanding of what NATS is capable of.

Thanks

It's nice to hear that NATS is tackling this problem space. I'll give it a try.

> I disagree that simply because it is not advertised as a "edge" technology that it is not one of the best-in-class techs for edge. It simply means, we are doing a poor job at awareness.

It's very easy to say "NATS is for everything", which seems to be the case here. It would be great if that was backed up with evidence.

It is a top priority. I do appreciate the constructive criticism and conversation. Feel free to reach out to me (byron at synadia dot com) or on the NATS Slack (https://slack.nats.io).

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