"Mike Batchelor" <mikebat@tmcs.net> writes:

Oh yes, the firewall. That convenient device that network software developers can assume will always pass port 80 and 443 traffic. So everything uses port 80 and 443 in the future Internet, and we're all the better for it.

Um, sure, but what are you arguing? That firewalls are useless and should all go away? (Good luck.) That firewalls don't really exist :-)? I'm simply saying that those who cite the "fundamental principle of end-to-end connectivity" are describing a world that does not, in fact, exist today; and that reality appears to be diverging from, rather than converging toward, that world. Pretending that NAT and firewalls don't exist, and hectoring the world to change, in the name of a "fundamental principle", isn't going to work -- at least, that's my humble prediction :-). Maybe it would be useful to design a base protocol that would provide a standardized method for things like passing an <address, port> tuple, or registering a desire to receive packets on a particular UDP port -- the kind of things that gamers, e.g., want, and that are tricky to make work through a NAT. Games, etc., could be written on top of this base protocol, and NATs and firewalls could be made to be aware of that protocol. Just a thought; any merit to it? Jim Shankland