[Cz-computers] General discussion about non-interactive file/record sharing articles

[Andrew M. Colarik, PhD]

Some simple background research on FTP and what is lacking is contained in
this published paper (see attached).

It may help with this discussion...

-----Original Message-----
From: cz-computers-bounces at mail.citizendium.org
[mailto:cz-computers-bounces at mail.citizendium.org] On Behalf Of Howard C.
Berkowitz
Sent: Friday, July 25, 2008 2:43 AM
To: cz-computers at mail.citizendium.org
Subject: [Cz-computers] General discussion about non-interactive file/record
sharing articles

(also on Computers forum - probably best to discuss there)

The problem: there are a number of categories, broader than file transfer in
the sense of FTP, which involve some kind of non-interactive content
transfer. I believe we need an "overarching" article to describe the varied
issues and then to link to the specific protocols, and perhaps some
intermediate articles about issues shared among subgroups of technologies.
I had started to do this with an article about "file transfer" to precede
"FTP", to provide some of the problems where FTP has limitations  (e.g.,
firewall-friendliness, NAT incompatibility, lack of standard approach to
encrypted transfer,lack of standard checkpoint/restart).  

"Information transfer" seems too general, as I am not focused on things like
viewing web pages -- although there are subcategories of enhancements to web
servers.

Still staying with idea of transfers of ordered sets of records, paradigms
other than FTP's came to mind:
   * NFS, optimized for LANs and with very different connection management
and error handling, also lacking security 
   * distributed file sharing (P2P methods with Torrent as the most likely
example)
   * Security fixes/enhancements to FTP (e.g., SFTP, firewall-friendly FTP
with the passive OPEN)

It then occurred to me that there are tools for transferring things that
aren't files, but messages/records that get transferred: the classic way
goes by many names, such as Netnews, USENET, and NNTP.  I mention this
because news is intelligent in the sense as are P2P methods that decide what
part of content should be serviced from where, which, in turn, makes me
think SMTP is close to belonging here, but does it have enough intelligence?

As I've mentioned, this category should avoid direct interaction such as
HTTP, but things that extend/support servers, such as 
 
   * content distribution networks (e.g., Akamai)[/li]
   * web caches (e.g., Squid)[/li]
   * protocols to support caches (e.g., WCCP, ICP) [/li]

are fair things to cover.

Can we discuss, probably on the forum, how to organize a set of articles and
the scope of their coverage?  What I'm finding hardest is coming up with a
meaningful name for the group of ideas, and then scoping the group (e.g.,
does SMTP belong? If so, POP3 and IMAP?)

Howard



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