Re: Use ofHTTP to pass firewalls

> I was not talking about NAT's, but things that block traffic on certain
> ports, like normal firewalls, but you are completely right that this can be
> used for NAT purposes aswell.
> 
> But, I get your point. Doing DHCP request, pppoe authentication etc when a
> host "wakes up" and get's an IP address is one thing. Doing the same or
> similar things when it for example starts it's "SIP telephony listener" or
> initiates some other flow is not good.
> 
> That is what I read in your message.

That's true, but there's more to it than that.  Yes, doing a dynamic DNS update
on a per-flow (rather than just a per-login) basis is a pain. But more generally,
expecting all apps to use SRV on a per-connection basis is a bad idea.  DNS names
are ill-suited as endpoint identifiers for a variety of reasons, including that  
DNS lookups are slow (often taking several seconds to complete), they're not 
terribly reliable (servers often falsely report errors and/or are misconfigured)
Putting SRV lookups in the path slows things down and makes the overall app
less reliable.  Port-hopping also makes it more difficult to diagnose and fix 
problems. 

You might get this to work for specific applications, but it's not a general
purpose solution.    And the last thing we need is for the network to become
more application-aware and application-specific.

Keith