ActiveMQ and Network Interfaces

When you are using ActiveMQ as a message broker, the need can arise to bind the queue listener to a specific network-interface. Although this is not very common and some argue that the OS should do the routing, you can face certain situations in which your software decides which network-interface SHOULD or MUST be used for the communication.

The reason could be that some communication-channels are expensive and the machine needs to switch network-interfaces on the fly because of you business logic. When the servers are not under your control you cannot simply change the OS routing tables.

There is a simple trick in ActiveMQ to select the network-interface to use, although you cannot find it in the manual -- but it is in the code. Just use the following scheme for the binding:

tcp://remote-queue-ip:61616@network-interface-ip:61616

You can also use other protocols, of course.