Performance may suffer when utilising server-hinting because topology information is included in the JGroups address.

Assuming you always set machine-id="X", both machine-id and X will be serialized everywhere addresses are serialized, e.g. in CommandInvocationId or in GlobalTransaction. The receiver then allocates 2 byte[] instances for them, 2 byte[][] for the ExtendedUUID etc.

It should be possible to make this an Infinispan level feature and re-use the same UUID addresses as in non-hinted clusters.