1) Server/client software is made available for multiple platforms, and the servers are set up across the country, with people registering their name/information/etc. The collection of servers forms a single network, so that no matter what physical machine you're connected to, you can still talk to people on other servers.
2) After a while, the servers become bogged down, and either go down, or lose connection with another server or group of servers, essentially splitting the people up depending on what server they're connected to.
3) A few people get sick of the bad service and decide to set up their own servers and connect them together, possibly modifying the server software to give additional features.
4) Eventually, everybody and their brother is running a network of messaging servers, and many people have accounts on multiple networks.
For those of you who haven't been on IRC for six years or so, this is basically what has happened to it. With the exception of unique logins/passwords, IRC is pretty close to an open source messaging service. A few of the IRC networks have set up bots to do the login/password work so that people can reserve nicknames, keep channels in order, etc. I'm not certain whether or not I'd want to see the possible open source messaging service end up like IRC, but I'm leaning towards nay.
"Originally designed to link a small number of research networks, the Internet's current addressing system, IPv4, only allows addresses up to 12 digits, which adds up to about 4 billion unique addresses." *scratching head* If I didn't know anything about computers and the internet, but knew a decent amount of math, that statement up there would confuse me a little. 12 digits: 999999999999 That's a little bit more than 4 million:). It's great when people try to explain computer math to the masses.
I think it's kinda funny (and/or interesting as the case may be) to see talk of Java being used for what it was designed for - for writing small applications to be used in consumer devices. If i remember correctly, the first thing that was written with Java (or rather, Oak I believe it was known as at that point) was a remote control.
I was reading through CNet's News.Com site this morning, and decided to read an article titled "Windows NT virus feared." To my surprise, it was about Defcon 7.0, specifically about CdC's Back Orifice 2000. Tim Clark seems to think that Back Orifice 2000 is a virus *and* a trojan all at the same time. He even goes as far as comparing it to "Melissa" and "Worm.ExploreZip." This just seems to be the result of a lack of study and/or research on the subject.
Unless I'm completely off my rocker (which has been known to happen from time to time), MP3 has pretty decent corporate support considering its primary use. With Diamond and Nullsoft (not much of a corporation really) both having portable MP3 players, it seems to me that the MP3 format has got at least *some* support. Of course, I probably sound like the owners of Betamax's back in the 80's.
One thing I do like about it is the ability to use multiple names per IP address.
Apache already has support for this, and a lot of the content providers out there are using it to save on IP addresses. For anyone wondering how this works, basically the browser has to request the entire URL on a GET, e.g. - GET http://www.yourdomain.com/ as opposed to just GET/.
I wonder what the speed difference is with the fact of concatenating packets into streams rather than placing 1 packet per 1 stream. I'd guess that for small servers it would be trivial but for large ones the change would be enormous.
Just in case there's still any confusion.. it's one file per TCP connection in the HTTP 1.0. HTTP 1.1 adds a "Keep Alive" feature that can be sent to keep the connection open.
You only actually need to choke the users down to what they've paid for when there is actual contention. If you let them have the full capabilities of the hardware the rest of the time, it costs you nothing and can only make them happier.
I guess you're working under the assumption that only "normal" users have to pay for bandwidth. ISP's often have to pay based on how much bandwidth they use per month. If you're gonna let people have 1Mb connections for the price of 128Kb connections, you'd better make sure the cost of the 128Kb connections pays for the 1Mb of bandwidth that you're using.
To start off, I'd like to say that I am in *no* way a Windows advocate, but I'd like to point out some facts.
1. Remote server administration: Would you be able to "telnet" into your Win 2000 box and reboot it??? How about general remote admin ability??? I doubt it. To do most admin tasking you'll have to sitting right there at the console.
Yes, actually, this is quite possible. There's a company out there that has a telnet daemon for NT available, and with a rather simple Perl script using the Win32 perl module, you can reboot the machine. True, it's not built into NT at the moment, but it wouldn't surprise me if M$ either A) included a telnet daemon in Win(NT)2000, or B) Included with the web server a configuration menu that allowed administrators to reboot the machine (I believe these are already in place for regular server administration, a concept that Netscape servers have used for quite some time).
2. FTP services, email services, news services: are those also going to included in Win 2000??? I doubt it. Again, Linux wins.
FTP Service has been part of NT since at least version 3.51, possibly before that (I'm not familiar with older versions of it). Currently, IIS handles the FTP service. For e-mail, M$ Exchange (read "piece of junk") Server is available, but I believe is a seperate purchase from the OS (at the moment, that could possibly change). I'm not sure what the status is on the NNTP server front. I had some experience with NT News servers back in '95, and they were really bad at the time (unstable, slow, etc.). I haven't heard much about them since really, although I imagine they've gotten at least moderately better.
3. Programming and development: compilers, perl, python,... are any of those going to included in Win 2000 too??? Not bloody likely.
> Again, the choice is Linux. C/C++ and Python I'm not sure of, but I know there is a GCC port available that M$ could include. ActiveState's Win32 port of Perl was included in *some* product from M$, I believe it was the NT resource kit. The GCC and Python (I'm guessing it exists) ports could be packaged in the resource kit as well. I think the best advantages of Linux/Apache over NT/IIS/whatever are speed and stability. NT and IIS still have memory leaks that have not been accounted for. Example - using ODBC to interface with an Access DB. Every time a page is hit that tries to access the database, it eats up a small chunk of memory, until the system runs out of memory. The only solution I'm aware of involves one that basically stops and restarts the web service every so often to free up the memory. You ever notice how much M$ likes to have things stopped and restarted? (If you don't, then you've obviously never run Windows 95). I'm curious what the longest recorded uptime for a Windows box is..
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2) After a while, the servers become bogged down, and either go down, or lose connection with another server or group of servers, essentially splitting the people up depending on what server they're connected to.
3) A few people get sick of the bad service and decide to set up their own servers and connect them together, possibly modifying the server software to give additional features.
4) Eventually, everybody and their brother is running a network of messaging servers, and many people have accounts on multiple networks.
For those of you who haven't been on IRC for six years or so, this is basically what has happened to it. With the exception of unique logins/passwords, IRC is pretty close to an open source messaging service. A few of the IRC networks have set up bots to do the login/password work so that people can reserve nicknames, keep channels in order, etc. I'm not certain whether or not I'd want to see the possible open source messaging service end up like IRC, but I'm leaning towards nay.
- coug_
"Originally designed to link a small number of research networks, the Internet's current addressing system, IPv4, only allows addresses up to 12 digits, which adds up to about 4 billion unique addresses." *scratching head* If I didn't know anything about computers and the internet, but knew a decent amount of math, that statement up there would confuse me a little. 12 digits: 999999999999 That's a little bit more than 4 million :). It's great when people try to explain computer math to the masses.
- coug_
- coug_
*shrug*
- coug
Apache already has support for this, and a lot of the content providers out there are using it to save on IP addresses. For anyone wondering how this works, basically the browser has to request the entire URL on a GET, e.g. - /.
GET http://www.yourdomain.com/
as opposed to just GET
I wonder what the speed difference is with the fact of concatenating packets into streams rather than placing 1 packet per 1 stream. I'd guess that for small servers it would be trivial but for large ones the change would be enormous.
Just in case there's still any confusion.. it's one file per TCP connection in the HTTP 1.0. HTTP 1.1 adds a "Keep Alive" feature that can be sent to keep the connection open.
- coug
I guess you're working under the assumption that only "normal" users have to pay for bandwidth. ISP's often have to pay based on how much bandwidth they use per month. If you're gonna let people have 1Mb connections for the price of 128Kb connections, you'd better make sure the cost of the 128Kb connections pays for the 1Mb of bandwidth that you're using.
1. Remote server administration: Would you be able to "telnet" into your Win 2000 box and reboot it??? How about general remote admin ability??? I doubt it. To do most admin tasking you'll have to sitting right there at the console.
Yes, actually, this is quite possible. There's a company out there that has a telnet daemon for NT available, and with a rather simple Perl script using the Win32 perl module, you can reboot the machine. True, it's not built into NT at the moment, but it wouldn't surprise me if M$ either A) included a telnet daemon in Win(NT)2000, or B) Included with the web server a configuration menu that allowed administrators to reboot the machine (I believe these are already in place for regular server administration, a concept that Netscape servers have used for quite some time).
2. FTP services, email services, news services: are those also going to included in Win 2000??? I doubt it. Again, Linux wins.
FTP Service has been part of NT since at least version 3.51, possibly before that (I'm not familiar with older versions of it). Currently, IIS handles the FTP service. For e-mail, M$ Exchange (read "piece of junk") Server is available, but I believe is a seperate purchase from the OS (at the moment, that could possibly change). I'm not sure what the status is on the NNTP server front. I had some experience with NT News servers back in '95, and they were really bad at the time (unstable, slow, etc.). I haven't heard much about them since really, although I imagine they've gotten at least moderately better.
3. Programming and development: compilers, perl, python, ... are any of those going to included in Win 2000 too??? Not bloody likely.
> Again, the choice is Linux. C/C++ and Python I'm not sure of, but I know there is a GCC port available that M$ could include. ActiveState's Win32 port of Perl was included in *some* product from M$, I believe it was the NT resource kit. The GCC and Python (I'm guessing it exists) ports could be packaged in the resource kit as well. I think the best advantages of Linux/Apache over NT/IIS/whatever are speed and stability. NT and IIS still have memory leaks that have not been accounted for. Example - using ODBC to interface with an Access DB. Every time a page is hit that tries to access the database, it eats up a small chunk of memory, until the system runs out of memory. The only solution I'm aware of involves one that basically stops and restarts the web service every so often to free up the memory. You ever notice how much M$ likes to have things stopped and restarted? (If you don't, then you've obviously never run Windows 95). I'm curious what the longest recorded uptime for a Windows box is..