Re: [WARP4U] WARP with UPnP

On 3 Dec 2009, at 11:24, Robin Berjon wrote:
> It would be really great if you were to join this group. If you are already following this list, and willing to make implementation proposals, it wouldn't necessarily take more of your time than it already does — probably no more than an extra phone call now and then when we're discussing this topic (of course, if you want to get more involved, that's fine as well!). It would, however, help with the IPR thing.

OK, I'm now the BBC representative on this WG.  Don't expect the BBC to have an opinion on all the issues that the group discusses though. :-)

> We certainly welcome technical solutions in this area. The scope of WARP 1.0 was decided a while ago and since we need to ship it really shouldn't be extended *but* it would not be difficult to have a separate document that plugs on top of the existing one and that can be published quickly. Right now a lot of the hesitation stems from the fact that we don't really have a clear definition of what "local" is, so a solution that doesn't have that issue will certainly be good.

Indeed, and I haven't seen strong enthusiasm for Marcin's suggestion (http://dev.w3.org/2006/waf/widgets-access-upnp/) that the definition of "local" be left to the user agent.  From my perspective the main issue with that proposal is that it's a bit of a recipe for unexpected behaviour on different platforms, so I'd like to explore the possibility of coming up with a stricter definition that the WG might be able to achieve consensus on.

Opera have already defined the concept of "private network" access for widgets (details at http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/opera-widgets-specification-fourth-ed/#private_network).  I'm not sure this is a perfect match for the "local network" in the use cases that have been mentioned here (indeed, I doubt it was intended to be), but the thing I like about this approach is that it's relatively simple for both widget developers and end-users to understand what it means, as well as being straightforward for UA developers to implement.  Presumably including it in the WARP spec has already been considered and rejected by the WG though?

I'm tempted to think that it should be possible to come up with a similar list of pre-standardised IP address ranges etc that could be considered "local", and if there's some support for exploring this approach from the other WG members, I'd be more than happy to cook up a straw-man proposal (hopefully covering both IPv4 and IPv6) for you all to poke holes in.

S

Received on Thursday, 10 December 2009 13:42:09 UTC