You might want to check the original paper describing it http://www.dre.vanderbilt.edu/~schmidt/PDF/reactor-siemens.pdf
The Reactor design pattern handles service requests that are
delivered concurrently to an application by one or more
clients. Each service in an application may consist of
serveral methods and is represented by a separate event handler
that is responsible for dispatching service-specific requests.
Dispatching of event handlers is performed by an initiation
dispatcher, which manages the registered event handlers.
Demultiplexing of service requests is performed by a
synchronous event demultiplexer.