[jdev] Re: help needed to implement a P2P Chat Client

[Ravi]

You have a very valid point. However these issues are not unique to P2P 
chat. This begs the question, how do current chat clients (jabber or 
otherwise) manage P2P audio/video transmission? If it can be done for 
audio/video, it can be done for text.

- Ravi

P.S.: Note that this is now just for sake of discussion. As I mentioned 
in another post, I do agree that benefits of P2P chat are questionable. 
I will consider starting with proven technology and reconsider the 
architecture in next version.



Hal Rottenberg wrote:
> This only works when you have simple ACL-based stateless firewalls.
> An application-layer firewall will look at your packets, see that they
> are not HTTP, and silently drop them.  A stateful firewall will of
> course not let you poke a hole inward until a connection has first
> been made outward.  Since this could easily be the problem on the
> other side as well...  Not even a $30 home router would let in port 80
> "unsolicited" unless the user was running a web server or something,
> and if every user were savvy enough to poke the holes in their own
> firewalls we wouldn't be having this discussion!
>