I solved my own problem. As is so often the case, it was a case of "user shooting self in foot"
http://activemq.apache.org/networks-of-brokers.html <http://activemq.apache.org/networks-of-brokers.html> As mentioned in the documentation, you need to have *advisories enabled* for a network of brokers to function properly. I had disabled them. My test programs now work as expected, so yes you can use direct tcp:// urls to connect to specific nodes in a discovery-based cluster. John -- View this message in context: http://activemq.2283324.n4.nabble.com/Verifying-a-multicast-cluster-tp4683357p4683375.html Sent from the ActiveMQ - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.