ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Lightstreamer

Okay, imagine you have a toy telephone that you can talk to your friend who lives in another room. Now imagine you want to send a lot of messages to your friend really quickly without waiting for them to respond every time. That's kind of like what Lightstreamer does, except instead of a toy telephone, it works with real internet connections between computers.

When you use a website or app on your computer or phone, sometimes you want it to update really quickly with new information. Like if you're watching a livestream or tracking a package, you want to see the new information as soon as it's available. Lightstreamer helps these updates happen quickly and efficiently so you don't have to wait or refresh the page.

How does it work? Well, imagine that toy telephone again. Let's say your friend has a bunch of other people calling them on their toy telephone too. It might get really confusing and hard for them to keep track of all the different conversations. But if they had a special system where they could hear all the messages from everyone and respond to them in order, it would be easier.

That's kind of like what Lightstreamer does. It's a system that helps manage lots of different messages or "streams" of information coming from different sources, and makes sure they get to the right place. It keeps track of which messages are the most important or urgent, and sends them first. It also helps make sure that the messages are delivered reliably and don't get lost or mixed up along the way.

So, in summary, Lightstreamer is a tool that helps make sure that lots of different types of information can be sent quickly and efficiently over the internet, like a big toy telephone system. It helps websites and apps update quickly and reliably, so you can get the information you need right away.