- From: Jeffrey Mogul <mogul@pa.dec.com>
- Date: Mon, 27 Nov 95 10:39:47 PST
- To: West Suhanic <wsuhanic@acs.ryerson.ca>
- Cc: HTTP working Group <http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com>
I think the central issue here is where the concept of media is handled. If the HTTP server is considered as a media server then it must have the facilities to deal with media. We've had this discussion at least once before. I firmly believe that HTTP should NOT be used for real-time continuous media. The URL mechanism allows us to include multiple transport protocols (e.g., HTTP, FTP, Gopher) in the web, and if we want to include real-time continuous, then we should use a protocol optimized for that. We should not try to turn HTTP into a kitchen-sink protocol, making it into a second-rate media protocol while also making it harder to implement. As a purely practical matter, this working group is chartered to work on IETF standards, which normally require "rough consensus and working code" to progress. We would be in relatively uncharted territory when it comes to real-time continuous media, which is still the subject of active research and debate. It would be quite premature to try to standardize this kind of thing, especially in the context of the most heavily-used protocol protocol in today's Internet. -Jeff
Received on Monday, 27 November 1995 10:49:00 UTC