[259] in Coldmud discussion meeting

about ports and whatnot

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Wed May 18 21:03:21 1994 )

From: deforest@netcom.com (Robert de Forest)
To: coldstuff@MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 18 May 1994 18:00:46 -0700 (PDT)

I like the idea of agreeing on common ports, and I also like the idea
 of conserving ports to avoid collisions. I think the best thing of all
 would be a protocall involving a (dare I say it?) meta-port which one
 would connect to for information on what other ports are available.

The idea of mimmicing the internet standards by adding 6600 to the standard
 ports makes sense in a pnemonic way, and even has an asthetic appeal to it,
 but I don't think we should limit ourselves for these reasons alone. Or any
 for that matter.

Incase my meta-port idea isn't clear, it would work something like this: You
 dial up port 6666 and get N lines consisting of [service, port, extra-info].
 The details of the syntax could be worked out latter, but the idea is that
 you supply an array of port->service information, with extra-info consisting
 of whatever was relevent to that service.

For example:

/world genesis.resudox.net 6666
--- (unknown 1) ---
['player_connect, 6667, #[['protocol, 'raw_telnet], ['status, 'up]]
['rwho, 6668, #[['protocol, 'ColdRWHO_v0.1a], ['status, 'up]]
['dist_db_connect_request, 6669, #[['protocol, 'ColdDIST_v0.0c], ['status, 'down]]

... etc
% Connection closed
--- No World ---

Simulated example (genesis is not excepting logins by users atm).

The fact that the above is expressed as lines of toliteral()ed lists is just
 a coincedence, and not necessary, 'tho it makes sense to me. Of course, the
 extra info might not include 'status, and would almost certainly include
 something else.

Well enough of that discussion.

I need to go buy a phone that works. More spam later.

Crag / Robert de Forest