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=VAST Technical Documentation=

This is the main technical documentation page for the VAST project at SourceForge. In here you will find official documentation on how to use VAST, and explanations of the internal workings of the VAST library.

VAST is an open source software library (under LGPL license) that allows you to build scalable virtual world applications based on P2P techniques. It mainly supports Spatial Publish Subscribe (SPS) and is based on Voronoi-based Overlay Network (VON). Additionally, Voronoi Self-organizing Overlay (VSO) helps to perform load balancing, and VoroCast helps with message forwarding to large areas.

VAST allows an application user to create a //VAST node//, or simply a //node// in a virtual space, and perform one of the following:


 * 1) to //subscribe// to an area on a 2D coordinate plane, and change the subscribed area (that is, move around).
 * 2) to //publish// a message to an area that will be delivered to subscribers whose subscription areas overlap with the publication area.
 * 3) to //send// a message to a particular node, or a group of specific nodes.
 * 4) to //list// the nodes that currently exist within the subscriber's subscription area.

Additionally, all these functions work at specific application-defined //layers//, where publications and subscriptions at different layers would not interfere.

You can find further information on the following topics:
 * How to install VAST?
 * How to use VAST?
 * How does VAST work? (see its procedure, protocol. and implementation notes)
 * What is VON?
 * What is VoroCast?
 * What is VSO?