Re: [apps-discuss] AJAX is the new NAT

[Marc Petit-Huguenin <[e-mail]>]

On 03/23/2011 01:22 PM, Carsten Bormann wrote:
> So, AJAX appears to be the new NAT.
>
> (For those who weren't there in the 1990s: the IETF closed their eyes
> with respect to the emerging pervasiveness of NATs and continued
> designing protocols that ignored NATs and then didn't win.
> I was hoping we would never do that again.)
>
> (For those who weren't there in the 2000s: AJAX has indeed made the
> browser a useful application delivery platform.  Once a node can
> control the code on *both* communicating peers, it can do interesting
> things without having to standardize much, as shown in RFC 3320 and as
> demonstrated nicely in AJAX.  If you read German, there is even a
> somewhat dated book from 2005 still online at
> http://www.teialehrbuch.de/Kostenlose-Kurse/AJAX/ the initial chapters
> of which explain why this form of mobile code is winning.)
>
> Now for 2011:
>
> What we need to do is acknowledge that AJAX has happened.
>
> The Web hasn't been "hypertext" for a long time now.  With all the
> negative (and not so negative) effects, which were nicely tabulated by
> Mark Nottingham in this thread.
>
> What we also need to do is help steer the standards-based foundation
> so that it encourages each and every single developer to favor
> standards-based (or standards-like) APIs/protocols even in this brave
> new world.  The persistence of REST in the AJAX world has helped a
> lot; other, community-driven standards such as JSON have even been
> picked up by the IETF (even though RFC 4627 is labeled Informational).
> But, for example the rigid same-origin policy of the existing browser
> world makes standards-based APIs less useful though -- AJAX apps can
> only use their own servers' APIs, so there is less incentive to offer
> AJAX APIs for consumption by other apps/clients.
>
> The IETF needs to *help* the AJAX world, not close our eyes again.
> Help AJAX get better, get more secure.  Get more standards-based, more
> open.

The greedy corporations who sold NATs to fix a problem that could have been 
fixed the right way, but with less money in their pocket, ruined the Internet 
for everybody.  The same thing is happening today with a bunch of hyperactive 
people who still do not understand why it is wrong to copy the user input 
directly in a database query and want their fabulous application deployed in the 
next 5 minutes.  You do understand that we are going back to the telecom model, 
intelligent network, dumb terminals, lots of money in their pockets, not much in 
ours, right?  Why smart people like the IETF want to be sure that in a close 
future they will never ever again been able to invent a new application that 
does not go through the servers of a few powerful corporations answering only to 
their shareholders is beyond me.

Yes, the end to end argument is dying, but what are we doing about this problem, 
is the right question.  Not how a chain saw is a better tool to cut the branch 
we are perched on.


-- 
Marc Petit-Huguenin
Personal email: [e-mail]
Professional email: [e-mail]
Blog: http://blog.marc.petit-huguenin.org