Re: finger url, copyright caches (again)
Daniel W. Connolly (connolly@hal.com)
Thu, 25 Aug 1994 06:11:13 +0200
In message <199408241605.JAA05432@nic.cerf.net>, Michael A. Dolan writes:
>At 04:17 PM 8/24/94 +0200, Reed Wade wrote:
>>Is it _really_ needed? No, but for a different reason. I wanted
>>this for end users who want to have pointers to finger servers.
>>Setting up more servers (finger gateways) is anti-scalable and
>>doubles the load on the net. I'd much prefer the gopher hack to
>>that.
>>
>>But yes, ease of use is the only actual reason for it.
>
>Reed, don't be so modest.....
>
>The same argument could be applied to any non-http URL - why not a CGI for
>everything; and then, necessarily, an httpd gateway in every pot ?
Not true. A CGI gateway on one host does not give all clients access
to all finger servers in a scalable fashion. (Not to mention
firewalls, etc.)
The gopher: hack does. The gopher protocol is a complete superset
of the finger protocol. (well... I haven't researched it carefully,
but the common "finger foo@bar" is expressible as a gopher URL).
It's not the case that you can "tunnel" other protocols like this.
Dan