To understand how replication works for Artifactory Edge nodes, we must first understand the purpose and uses of Artifactory Edge.
Artifactory Edge is a special edition of Artifactory that exists specifically to provision releases to runtime environments. It is intended for use with JFrog Distribution, which allows users to create release bundles and efficiently publish release Artifacts to Edge Nodes.
Release bundles are designed to be immutable.
In order to efficiently distribute release artifacts, Distribution and Artifactory use replication to push the Artifacts to Edge nodes.
To keep the distribution model intact, there are limitations to how replication works on an Edge Node as compared to a full Artifactory Pro installation.