Filters¶

Filters are interfaces which can modify messages including routes, destinations, times, existence, and payloads. This is useful for inserting communication modules into a data stream as an optional component they can also be used to clone messages and randomly drop them.

Filter Creation¶

Filters are registered with the core or through the application API. There are also Filter object that hide some of the API calls in a slightly nicer interface. Generally a filter will define a target endpoint as either a source filter or destination filter. Source filters can be chained, as in there can be more than one of them. At present there can only be a single non-cloning destination filter attached to an endpoint.

Non-cloning filters can modify the message in some way, cloning filters just copy the message and may send it to multiple destinations.

On creation, filters have a target endpoint and an optional name. Custom filters may have input and output types associated with them. This is used for chaining and automatic ordering of filters. Filters do not have to be defined on the same core as the endpoint, and in fact can be anywhere in the federation, any messages will be automatically routed appropriately.

predefined filters¶

Several predefined filters are available, these are parameterized so they can be tailored to suite the simulation needs

reroute¶

This filter reroutes a message to a new destination. it also has an optional filtering mechanism that will only reroute if some patterns are matching the patterns should be specified by “condition” in the set string the conditions are regular expression pattern matching strings

delay¶

This filter will delay a message by a certain amount

randomdelay¶

This filter will randomly delay a message according to specified random distribution available options include distribution selection, and 2 parameters for the distribution some distributions only take one parameter in which case the second is ignored. The distributions available are based on those available in the C++ <random> library

constant - param1=”value” this just generates a constant value
uniform param1=”min”, param2=”max”
bernoulli param1=”prob”, param2=”value” the bernoulli distribution will return param2 if the bernoulli trial returns true, 0.0 otherwise. Param1 is the probability of returning param2
binomial param1=t (cast to int) param2=”p”
geometric param 1=”prob” the output is param2*geom(param1) so multiplies the integer output of the geometric distribution by param2 to get discrete chunks
poisson param1=”mean”
exponential param1=”lambda”
gamma param1=”alpha” param2=”beta”
weibull param1=”a” param2=”b”
extreme_value param1=”a” param2=”b”
normal param1=”mean”, param2=”stddev”
lognormal param1=”mean”, param2=”stddev”
chi_squared param1=”n”
cauchy param1=”a” param2=”b”
fisher_f param1=”m” param2=”n”
student_t param1=”n”

randomdrop¶

This filter will randomly drop a message, the drop probability is specified, and is modeled as a uniform distribution.

clone¶

this message will copy a message and send it to the original destination plus a new one.

firewall¶

The firewall filter will eventually be able to execute firewall like rules on messages and perform certain actions on them, that can set flags, or drop or reroute the message. The nature of this is still in development and will be available at a later release.

custom filters¶

Custom filters are allowed as well, these require a callback operator that can be called from any thread and modify the message in some way.