Protocols (Was: HTTP)

[Stewart Stremler]

begin  quoting Gregory K. Ruiz-Ade as of Sun, Dec 08, 2002 at 07:03:04PM -0800:
[snip]
> So why don't we use the same type of functionality that exists in Sun's RPC 
> Portmapper?

That was the path I was thinking of heading down...

> Why not have an inet-portmapper that does the exact same thing for tcp & udp 
> port numbers (or hell, make a super-portmap server that handles _all_ 
> required port mapping and inquiry needs)?
 
Isn't this what happens with CORBA and RMI?

> It would definitely make firewalling more difficult, but there should be ways 
> to fix the firewalls so that it would all work.

Actually, the current system (commonly-used but not required 'standard'
ports) works quite well for that.  It's not the technology that is broke.

Well, maybe a little. Why does everyone want their little-used and
useless protocol to have a _reserved_ port?

> Perhaps the solution would actually be a mix of xinetd & portmapper...  Who 
> knows, I'd have to give it some serious thought, which isn't going to happen 
> tonight.

It would be a simple protocol. If I'd kept my perl skillz up, it would
probably be a four-liner.

(Open a port, listen for connections, read one line, strip out all non
alphanumeric characters including whitespace, search /etc/services for
that string, return all lines that match, close the connection.)

-Stewart "These are the standard ports according to ME." Stremler