ipline

ipline is a term used in networking and software engineering to describe a modular pipeline architecture for processing IP-based data streams. It typically consists of sequential stages, each performing transformation or analysis on data units such as packets or messages. The term is not standardized and may be used differently across projects.

A typical ipline comprises producers that ingest data from IP sources, a series of processing stages (parsers, filters, analyzers, enrichers), and sinks that emit results to storage, dashboards, or other systems. The pipeline supports streaming processing, backpressure, and parallelism across CPU cores or devices.

Implementations and use cases: In practice, ipline concepts appear in network monitoring, telemetry collection, and real-time analytics. It can be implemented atop various transport layers (TCP, UDP) and data formats (custom binary, JSON). Some implementations emphasize zero-copy data handling and NIC offloads for high performance.

Relationship to related concepts: IpLine is related to data pipelines, stream processing, and dataflow frameworks. It differs from traditional batch pipelines by focusing on IP data streams and online processing. It may be implemented with existing frameworks such as message queues, reactive streams, or dataflow graphs, with adapters for IP input and output.

Etymology and usage: The name ipline is sometimes used as a portmanteau of IP and pipeline. It is more common in internal project documentation than in formal standards, and the term may be used to describe a design pattern rather than a specific product. See also: IP, pipeline, stream processing.