- Erlang nodes communicate with each other using a custom communication protocol called the "Erlang Distribution Protocol”
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EPMD: Erlang Port Mapper Daemon (EPMD) is typically installed by default alongside Erlang/OTP distribution on most Linux systems. It manages node registration and discovery in distributed Erlang systems. EPMD operates as a separate daemon process, listening on port 4369. The protocol is simple text-based and built on top of TCP/IP. The EPMD process can be started explicitly or automatically as a result of the Erlang node startup(The daemon is started automatically by command erl).
EPMD acts as a name server on all hosts involved in distributed Erlang computations. When an Erlang node starts, the node has a name and it obtains an address from the host OS kernel. The name and address are sent to the epmd daemon running on the local host. The job of the epmd daemon is to **keep track of which node name li