What is a signal in ASP.NET SignalR?

Question

I've heard Damian Edwards, the co-creator of SignalR use the term signal often when he talks about SignalR. What exactly does it refer to? Does it refer to a Connection or a hub in SignalR terms ?

I understand that a publisher can publish to a signal and whoever is subscribed to that signal, receive that message. This makes sense for broadcast or group messages, but what about messages targeting individual users? In that case does each user subscribe to a different signal?

The configuration parameter - DefaultMessageBufferSize is an integer indicating the size of the message buffer for a specific signal (connection, group, users, and so on). The default value is 1,000.

• From the SignalR documentation

So, does this mean that this message buffer is maintained for each individual user ?

Answer 1

This is how the DefaultMessageBufferSize config setting works: It sets in memory each message sent per hub per connection. By default, SignalR retains 1000 messages.