While we are on this topic... It's worth noting that although we are talking about files a lot here, this is going to affect any OOB data, such as voice chat, webcams, whiteboards etc etc. There is more to OOB data that sending your mates MP3's.
> Also there is nothing stopping someone from pushing a file on someone wether > they wanted it or not, the only way files should be sent is that the sender > sends a request to the receiver and then the receiver downloads the file > from the sender (HTTP or otherwise), not the sender pushing the file to the > receiver. Is there some way to do an HTTP "push". The reason I ask, is that it would get around some of the NAT problems if I could get my client to initiate a file transfer in cases where there is a firewall blocking the normal HTTP "get". Some of the file sharing apps do this, (try for a pull and if that fails try a push). On my local machine (behind NAT) I have the ironic situation, where I can send files by ICQ, and receive them via Jabber, but not vice versa. With some sort of "push-pull" method, it would mean that if I had my NAT port mapping set up correctly, I could transfer files to anyone even if they didn't. > Also if the whole reason for this is because of wanting to get around a > firewall then you need to do it in the correct manor, using something like > PASS, so if a server provider is prepared to allow the transfering of files > this way they just setup a PASS server, you cant just force it on server > providers like this, that would end up making lots of the free servers > either shut down or start charging for using it. Bandwidth is not free. About this whole PASS thing...it seems like a great idea, but really the only efficient places to have a PASS server are locally at your ISP, or locally at your peers ISP. Anywhere else, and you are going to be chewing though bandwidth for no reason. And I don't fancy the task of trying to explain to my ISP that I need them to set one of these somewhere on their network... And alternative, would be to create a simple(-ish) PASS type component that would run as a service under WinNT/2000/XP or under Linux, and make it very simple for consumers to install. When they install a client behind ICS or other NAT box, you could make it very clear to them that they need to install this PASS component on the gateway machine that has the private IP address, or their files/voicechat/webcam etc will not work. Of course this isn't going to help the people that use hardware NAT boxes, but they will have to wait for UPnP I guess. Michael _______________________________________________ jdev mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.jabber.org/listinfo/jdev
