Re: [rtcweb] realiable data service

Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter@stpeter.im> Thu, 21 July 2011 02:35 UTC

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Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 20:35:10 -0600
From: Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter@stpeter.im>
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Cc: rtcweb@ietf.org
Subject: Re: [rtcweb] realiable data service
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On 7/20/11 2:37 PM, Bernard Aboba wrote:
> Agreed.
>
> To make this a bit more concrete. From your perspective, what is the
> preferred mechanism for file transfer in XMPP, and what would it take to
> support this in a browser?

The great thing about file transfer mechanisms in XMPP is that there are 
so many to choose from. :)

The most reliable mechanism is "in-band bytestreams", a simple chunking 
method that uses the XMPP channel itself. That's not the fastest method 
but it's the most reliable. Clearly it would be faster to set up a 
direct connection, or if that fails because of NATs to use a relay. We 
have a technology for that, too, but we don't have a lot of relays 
deployed on the network. Then there's the pseudo-tcp stuff that Google 
uses in Google Talk. Or you can upload the file somewhere and just send 
a URL (which makes a lot of sense if you're using BOSH instead of the 
traditional TCP connection method).

I'm not yet convinced that any of those methods is quite right for 
RTCWEB, but I haven't studied the problem intensively.

Peter