HTTP-NG: not a hypertext transfer protocol

I've some basic comments to the general directions of this HTTP-NG:

   The HTTP-NG protocol isn't according the architectural model a Hypertext
   Transfer Protocol. How about HOPP: hyperobject processing protocol?
   Most of the things of the HTTP-NG protocol layer could done by CORBA and
IIOP
   today. The garbage collector and the human readable URIs for type ids are
   nice ideas. But I'm not sure, if these ideas can rectify the huge work
to be
   done for a new object based distributed architecture.
   For providing the old HTTP functions you must establish an object
   infrastructure over the HTTP-NG protocol layer. Between the logical
hypertext
   objects you have to define some sort of protocol providing the Hypertext
   functionality. I regard this protocol as the real new HTTP in HTTP-NG.
   The SMUX idea of multiplexing TCP connections is a good idea, because
   filedescriptors of firewall proxies are a limited resource.  But a lot
of the
   issues here are solved with HTTP 1.1. If SMUX proves more generic and gives
   more performance than IP-tunneling or some other kind of TCP over TCP, it
   will be of use.
   I believe the whole thing is called HTTP-NG to solve some fund raising
issues
   for a distributed architecture research project. HTTP-NG is not HTTP
anymore,
   it solves a different set of problems. Personally I fear that HTTP-NG is
   losing the most important feature of HTTP 1.x: simplicity.

The 12th fundamental truth about networking can be found in RFC1906
(http://info.internet.isi.edu:80/in-notes/rfc/files/rfc1925.txt):

  (12) In protocol design, perfection has been reached not when there
          is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take
          away.

There is a lot of truth in this april fool's day RFC  in a way as in Dilbert
cartoons.

BTW I think this 12th fundamental truth about networking is derived from a
sentence of french aircraft pilot and author Antoine de Saint Exupery. He
describes the beauty of his aircraft in the same way. The title of the
wonderful
book is "Wind, Sand and Stars"
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0156970902/002-5939310-9331441).

I would like to add two more thruths to that list.

Complexity is easy, simplicity is a hard to achieve, (From a text book
about the
formal specification language Z.)

Standards are nice, beause there are such a lot of them. (From a book about
client-server-computing.)

You see, I like such one sentence wisdoms.

Ciao,

Uli Kunitz

Received on Monday, 13 July 1998 18:47:12 UTC