Strategy 3: The Erlang Distribution Protocol

On our spectrum, the strategies have moved from very tight integration within the same process to looser coupling between processes. Both of these techniques integrate systems that reside on the same machine. This last technique will introduce distribution between machines.

Earlier, we introduced the Erlang distribution protocol which Elixir uses to communicate between nodes. There’s no reason to limit its use to the Erlang VM. As long as a language or a platform implements the distribution protocol, we can use that language to communicate with Erlang nodes.

Implementing the Erlang distribution protocol is not easy because it requires the ability to serialize and deserialize Erlang data structures into binaries, and the capability to communicate with Erlang’s Port Mapper Daemon ...