Re: TCPMUX (RFC 1078) status

[Joe Touch <[e-mail]>]

On 8/21/2013 8:31 AM, Martin Sustrik wrote:
> On 21/08/13 17:12, Joe Touch wrote:
>
>>> The real problem here IMO is how to distinguish between "adding a
>>> completely new application" -- which should require approval process --
>>> and "adding a new component within an existing distributed application"
>>> -- which should be managed by devs themselves.
>>
>> IMO it's easy - any group of services you want others to be able to use
>> independently could justify a new port, but you can always mux them all
>> together if you want to avoid additional firewall configuration issues.
>
> So what would you use for muxing, if TCPMUX is not a good idea?

You need to roll your own. The requirements of systems vary widely, as 
do the costs/benefits of different approaches.

I listed a few before, but here's a more comprehensive list:
	- service per message
		demux based on message ID
		use IPC (interprocess comm) to handoff internal
		to your system

	- service per connection
		demux based on the first message in an
		association (TCP or UDP), and either continue to
		forward messages to a different process or handoff
		the connection

	- subservice on different ports
		determine what subservice you want to initiate,
		start it on an ephemeral port, and indicate the
		port number in-band (e.g., as with FTP and others)

Given you want to keep things on a single port, the first two are 
probably more useful.

Joe