External Access & Secure Sender Device
Connexion supports sending and receiving messages to/from other Connexion instances via a proprietary secured protocol. This feature is intended for message transport within an internal network - remote agents are typically used for transporting messages across the WAN.
You can also use other standard protocols (like MLLPs, sFTPs, HTTPs, etc.) to transfer messages between Connexion servers, however, the External Access feature transfers additional metadata which enables a number of features (like message tracing) to span discrete Connexion instances.
This feature is also easier to configure, and has some native functionality to prevent against accidentally sending messages to an incorrect endpoint.
To use the External Access feature, it must be configured on the receiving instance via the Configuration Wizard. By default, port 8090 is used. If firewalls are in play on the receiving instance, port forwarding should be used.
The Queue Device is the receiver of messages, and a Secure Sender Device is the sender. To enable External Access, select the queue device which will receive messages, and navigate to the External Access tab.
Check the Enable External Queuing option, and click the Generate Certificate button if the public key textbox is empty.
When External Access is enabled, a globe icon is displayed over the queue icon.
Save the channel, and then open a new instance of the Connexion UI (leaving the current one open) and navigate to the sending Connexion instance. In this example, we’ll create a new channel which ends with a Secure Sender Device.
Navigating to the Secure Sender Device should look similar to the above image. You can manually input the required information, or, use drag and drop to create the linkage. Click the cube icon in the grey box and drag to the similar grey box of the target queue device (by positioning the two management UIs next to each other).
Both UIs must be running with the same elevation level. Drag-drop will not work if one UI is elevated and the other not.
After completing the drag-drop, the Secure Sender Device will be populated with the required values, and linkages will be created between the two devices.
Starting the Secure Sender channel (and ingesting some data) will flow data to the target queue. The target channel does not need to be running.
The Secure Sender provides significantly improved performance when the upstream queue is in Batch Mode.