Re: section 1, intro, for review

I'm not going to try to defend RFC 3205, other than to say that it's been
through the process that attempts to ensure it represents the rough
consensus of the IETF (recognized Internet architects).

If the TAG doesn't agree with parts or all of RFC 3205, then I would hope
that the Web architects and the Internet architects can come up with
something they agree to.  It's going to get progressively more painful if
the two groups don't agree.

Rob

On Tue, 19 Mar 2002, Mark Nottingham wrote:

>
> Personally, I have a hard time swallowing parts of 3205, especially
> section three; things like 'traditional use' are, at best, ill-defined.
> I'm still waiting for a crisp definition of 'substantially new service';
> considering the current threads on TAG, what set of data isn't
> potentially accessible through the HTTP?
>
> Artificially limiting the uses of the HTTP because
>    a) firewall administrators are used to using ports as a heuristic for
> identifying applications, and
>    b) people deploy intermediaries that aren't semantically transparent
> and force-route messages through them
> isn't the proper way to address these problems, IMO.
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, March 19, 2002, at 09:44  PM, Rob Lanphier wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 19 Mar 2002, Paul Prescod wrote:
> >> "Roy T. Fielding" wrote:
> >>>
> >>> ...
> >>>
> >>> It wouldn't be less useful.  The point is that it would gain nothing
> >>> from doing so.  It is a store and forward messaging system -- the
> >>> application
> >>> consists of delivering the message, that's all.
> >>
> >> If you were tasked with inventing a protocol for fetching mail from a
> >> remote server, would you choose to make it a specialization of HTTP or
> >> not? I'm not asking whether there is sufficient cost/benefit to replace
> >> POP, IMAP, etc. Probably there is not. I'm asking how you decide when
> >> to
> >> invent a new application protocol or just use HTTP.
> >
> > My 2 cents:  no.
> >
> > See RFC 3205 for the justification and for a detailed discussion as to
> > guidelines for using HTTP as a substrate:
> >
> > http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3205.txt
> >
> > Email constitutes a substantially different service than traditional
> > HTTP.
> >
> > Rob
> >
> >
> >
> --
> Mark Nottingham
> http://www.mnot.net/
>
>

Received on Wednesday, 20 March 2002 01:45:37 UTC