With a chain cluster, each node in the cluster is not connected to every node in the cluster directly, instead the nodes form a chain with a node on each end of the chain and all other nodes just connecting to the previous and next nodes in the chain.

An example of this would be a three node chain consisting of nodes A, B and C. Node A is hosted in one network and has many producer clients connected to it sending order messages. Due to corporate policy, the order consumer clients need to be hosted in a different network, and that network is only accessible via a third network. In this setup node B acts as a mediator with no producers or consumers on it. Any messages arriving on node A will be forwarded to node B, which will in turn forward them to node C where they can get consumed. Node A does not need to directly connect to C, but all the nodes can still act as a part of the cluster.

To set up a cluster in this way, node A would define a cluster connection that connects to node B, and node B would define a cluster connection that connects to node C. In this case, cluster connections are only desired in one direction since messages are only moving from node A->B->C and never from C->B->A.

For this topology, set max-hops to 2. With a value of 2 the knowledge of what queues and consumers that exist on node C would be propagated from node C to node B to node A. Node A would then know to distribute messages to node B when they arrive, even though node B has no consumers itself, it would know that a further hop away is node C which does have consumers.