[JDEV] DSPS

[Justin Karneges]

The problem is that there is otherwise no real clean way to establish a direct 
connection.  Everyone is behind a firewall these days.

Maybe jabberd should support a way of getting your external IP address, so 
that there could be some sort of stream negotiation between two clients.  As 
it stands, clients don't even know what their real external address is unless 
you were to specify it directly (not exactly user-friendly).

The "stream" idea IMO makes more sense than just http URLs, because it implies 
more possibilities than just file transfer.  It also keeps the stream 
handshake as a separate layer, which simplifies things when you consider the 
various possible methods of transport (TCP, DSPS, PASS, XML-thru-server??), 
SSL, reverse-connections, etc.  I completely agree with Rob about keeping the 
stream layer _separate_ from the file transfer.

DSPS is dead-easy to use from a client perspective.  What we need is something 
similar to it, as a standard part of jabberd, that allows clients to ask for 
a stream to another JID.  Something very simple like:  "Oh, you want 
joe at blow.org/Home?  Connect to this IP address."  This might be through DSPS, 
or it might be direct, or whatever.  I'm just saying, we need a simple way 
for clients to ask for a stream.  DSPS seems to have a nice interface, but it 
assumes we want to route through an external point.  Maybe the real solution 
is to have an even smarter component that will hook you up directly to the 
other person if possible, otherwise fall back to DSPS (all hiding this from 
the client).

The current situation is not optimal.

-Justin

On Tuesday 23 July 2002 08:12, Ben Schumacher wrote:
> I, personally, would be against making this the "standard Jabber OOB
> mechanism", or even the "preferred." This puts an unreasonable amount of
> extra load on a server, when it isn't needed. If clients can make direct
> connections to each other, and don't need the benefit of any of the other
> features DSPS provides (read: multicast), then they should transfer files
> directly.
>
> There is no reason to expect that people running servers are going to be
> willing to allow the extra load on their bandwidth.
>
> bs.
>
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