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HTTP's Days Numbered

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the big-number-or-small-number-is-the-question dept.

dlek writes: "ZDNet is running an article in which a Microsoft .Net engineer declares HTTP's days are numbered. (For those of you just tuning in, HTTP is the primary protocol for the world-wide web.) Among the tidbits in this manifesto is the inference that HTTP is problematic primarily because it's asymmetric--it's not peer-to-peer, therefore it's obsolete. Hey everybody, P2P was around long before Napster, and was rejected when client-server architecture was more appropriate!"

4 of 505 comments (clear)

  1. eXtensible Application Transport Protocol (XATP) by jeremie · · Score: 5, Interesting

    HTTP does have it's problems, and it's one of the reasons that Jabber has it's own internal transport protocol to accomplish IM.

    I've seen other proposals for HTTP replacements and have been less-than-pleased by their complexity and design. Based on what I've learned from Jabber, and great feedback from many in the open source and standards communities, XATP was born:

    http://xatp.org/

    XATP, the eXtensible Application Transport Protocol is very simplistic and geared to operate at a layer below content, identity, framing, and other application-level issues. Check it out and offer feedback or participate if your interested.

    Jer

  2. Hmm, this sounds familiar by drew_kime · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Didn't Cringely claim several months ago that they were going to try to do this? Well, not quite, but back in August he wrote:

    According to these programmers, Microsoft wants to replace TCP/IP with a proprietary protocol -- a protocol owned by Microsoft -- that it will tout as being more secure.

    So they decided to go up one level of abstraction. Hell why not, that way they break even more competing products.

    --
    Nope, no sig
  3. Usual MS FUD by gweihir · · Score: 5, Interesting

    seem to remember that some time in the past MS claimed that the Internet was obsolete and the MicroSoft Network was the future. I think Unix is also obsolete according to MS.

    And of course I am obsolete since I refuse to view MS products as anything else than toys. Admittedly by now toys that actually have some level of stability and can be used for some (limited) tasks without too much hassle. But as long as they insist on sitting on their island (admittedly a large one, but instable and plagued by document-rot), I will not consider their products "professional" in any sense.

    Incidently the only argument in the article (aside from the "argument" that P2P is better than client-server, given as dogma) is that there are problems with transactions that have several minutes connection time. I am sorry, but I don't see how that makes http obsolete. First these long transaction are not that common and second they work fine. Or are we going towards an Internet where a telnet/ssh connection will be terminated after 3 minutes, because the backbone cannot cope?

    Pure FUD, as far as I can tell.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted and ignored otherwise.
  4. *chuckle* by sheldon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've never heard Don Box described as just a .Net engineer. That'd be like calling Richard W. Stevens just a "C programmer."

    Thanks for the laugh. It's always good to be reminded just how out of touch /. is with the Windows world.