Client node: An executable program that uses the NDFS-II library to consume and/or produce flows. There are also client nodes that do not use flows, but provide control over the NDFS-II network such as the Control Center.

Flow: A buffered data stream connecting a producer node to an arbitrary number of consumer nodes and providing distributed data transport. These flows have a type (e.g.: Flow_Multichannel_Audio), a name (e.g.: arrayOut), and a connection ID. It is possible to add more properties to flow (ex: bits=24 rate=22050 channels=64). You also have the possibility to create your own type of flows depending on your needs.

Duplicator: An executable program that handles the distribution of the flow between the clients, either on a single host or to network connected hosts on a network. As a user, you will never have to directly handle duplicators.

Buffers: The basic unit of data exchanged among client nodes via flows when they emit data to, or consume data from a flow. Each flow has its own buffer characteristics, in particular the maximum size that a buffer can be, and the data type being transmitted. Buffers are also called data blocks.

Application: An application is a flow domain in which the clients run. An application is thus represented as an arbitrary number of client nodes exchanging data. The NDFS-II library provides a default flow domain. Users can define their own domains, making it possible to have several domains, i.e., several NDFS-II application running on the same physical subnet. A physical machine can only be part of one domain. The domain is set up when starting the data flow server.

Data flow server: The server that centralizes all the information for a given application. The information is in particular what and where are the client nodes on the network and which flows they provide or consume. A Data flow server can only belong to one domain.

SHM, Shared Memory: This facility is used by a given host to exchange data between duplicators and clients, since it is much faster than any other inter-process communication mechanisms.

Host, System or Machine: A computer participating in an application graph by running a data flow server, and any number of client nodes.