Isn this expensive from a networking standpoint, i.e., needing to create sockets for each org.jboss.cache.Cache instance?
Yes, it can be. For such cases it is recommended that you configure your cache using the JGroups Multiplexer, which allows several caches to share a single JGroups channel. Please see the Users’ Guide for details on how to configure the JGroups Multiplexer. A faster and more efficient approach is to use a shared transport in JGroups. Please see the JGroups documentation for more details on how to do this.