[E-Lang] VLS for everyone

[Tyler Close]

Steve wrote:
> Yes, I certainly have expressed an interest in reviving the VLS.
> I'm not sure of the timeframe, as it'll require me to dig
> back into Java
> networking (which is simple compared to writing socket code in say,
> C or Perl) and also requires me to get up to snuff coding E
> internals
> (which I'm looking forward to).  Regardless, it needs to happen and
> there's no reason that I can't do it.

Great. I think we have enough interested parties that getting
something done should be feasible.

> I've talked with damien stolarz of static regarding what
> they were doing
> for penetration of double-NAT/firewalls and they're
> tunneling connection
> brokerage info through UDP packets.
>
> [ http://www.static.com/developer/opensource/p2pthruNAT.html
>   http://www.static.com/developer/opensource/firewall.htm ]

What exactly are the issues with firewalls that are related to the VLS
service? I really can't think of any. The VLS server is sitting on an
outside box with a permanent IP address. The VLS server is not behind
a firewall. The client may be behind a firewall, but it is connecting
out to the VLS server. It's easy enough for this outbound connection
to be just an HTTP GET operation.

The place where firewalls do become an issue is when the client tries
to use the fetched address information to contact the target host. I
think we can and should ignore this step in the definition and
implementation of the VLS service.

Sometime this weekend, I'll try to put a summary of my HTTPY proposal
on the waterken.com site.

Tyler