Re: Applications Messaging Standard

From: Alasdair Allan <aa-at-astro.ex.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2007 21:07:30 +0000

Patrick Dowler wrote:
> On a multi-user machine, the initial hand-shake could exchange the
> user-name
> to make sure client and hub are running under the same user
> (spoofable, but
> we aren't trying to make this overly secure, just simple for users).
>
> If there is a collision on the port in a multi-user environment, just
> increment the port number and try again. So clients and hubs start by
> connecting to port N and checking the user; if they connect and
> find the same
> user is running the hub, the client proceeds and the (2nd) hub
> terminates
> quietly (or not). If the new hub doesn't find anything, it tries to
> take the
> port (starts listening). If the client or hub finds a hub but user
> doesn't
> match, they try again on port N+1. If the client doesn't find a
> hub, it
> probably has to check higher port numbers (in case that users hub
> was not the
> first to start and hence is on port N+something).

Although it does add a fair amount of complexity into the client side to allow the initial handshaking to work successfully, I actually quite like this idea.

Al. Received on 2007-02-16Z22:08:28