Addressing messages using different topics vs. using in-message identifier
Suppose we have one control node ns_a/control and multiple device nodes ns_b_[1|2|3|...]/device (i.e. for 2 device nodes it would be ns_b_1/device, ns_b_2/device). I want to send a control message m1 tp different device nodes. There are two possibilities to do so.
1) Create specific topic for each tuple (ns_a/control, ns_b_1/device), (ns_a/control, ns_b_2/device) and so on. Thus the message m1 will always get to one specific device node depending on which topic I publish to. The drawback is the fact that I would have to create as many publishers as many device nodes I have.
2) Create only one topic to publish to and specify the receiver in the message m1 itself. I could for instance add variable int receiver to the message m1 which would specify for which device the message was sent. The drawback of this approach is the fact, that all device nodes would have to process all messages m1 no matter for which device node this message was sent and they would have to check themselves whether the message was addressed for them.
Which approach is more 'clean' and/or is there any other and better approach to deal with such a situation?
Thank you in advance.