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- Path: sparky!uunet!mcsun!uknet!warwick!nott-cs!lut.ac.uk!
- From: M.T.Hamilton@lut.ac.uk ([*] M.T.Hamilton)
- Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gopher,uk.net
- Subject: Proxy servers to interconnect JANET<->Internet
- Keywords: Gateway NIR CB Internet Proxy!
- Message-ID: <1992Dec23.105845.12981@lut.ac.uk>
- Date: 23 Dec 92 10:58:45 GMT
- Sender: comth@lut.ac.uk ([*] M.T.Hamilton)
- Followup-To: comp.infosystems.gopher
- Organization: Dept of Computer Studies, Loughborough University, UK
- Lines: 77
- Nntp-Posting-Host: suna.lut.ac.uk
-
- I've recently become interested in gatewaying UK Coloured Book and
- Internet services via proxy servers - by which I mean hosts which
- appear on both networks and make services on each visible to the
- other.
-
- Gopher would make an interesting application to experiment with,
- given its simplicity (barely more complicated than finger!),
- popularity (some 650 'public' servers), and the fact that there
- is currently nothing like it in the CB universe!
-
- What do the rest of you think? Is anyone doing this sort of thing
- already?!? A vague description of what I have in mind follows...
-
- The 'path' field seems to be the natural place to stuff the proxy info
- into, e.g. if a regular gopher link looks like this:
-
- Name=Publications
- Type=1
- Port=70
- Path=1/Publications
- Host=hill.lut.ac.uk
-
- ...to a Coloured Book host it might look something like this:
-
- Name=Publications
- Type=1
- Port=GOPHER
- Path=proxy_gopher://hill.lut.ac.uk:70/1/Publications
- Host=uk.ac.lut.proxy
-
-
- A Coloured Book host would have a link like this:
-
- Name=LUT_reports
- Type=1
- Port=70
- Path=1/LUT_reports
- Host=uk.ac.lut.hill
-
- ...and appear to Internet users as:
-
- Name=LUT_reports
- Type=1
- Port=70
- Path=proxy_gopher://uk.ac.lut.hill:GOPHER/1/LUT_reports
- Host=proxy.lut.ac.uk
-
-
- All the proxy server has to do is relay gopher protocol messages
- between hosts on both networks, viz.
-
- (1) Open client's transport (implicit)
- (2) Read gopher selector string
- (3) Munge out the real host/port/path details
- (4) Open real server's transport
- (5) Pass on real selector string from (3)
- (6) Retrieve results - if links, munge as appropriate
- (7) Close real server's transport
- (8) Pass results back to client
- (9) Close client's transport
-
-
- I would envisage adding the code to implement gopher over the
- Yellow Book transport to the current Unix distribution, and
- running the CB server from ybtsd.
-
- Comments welcome!
-
-
- Martin
-
- PS I realise this could also be done with the ISODE, and I'll be
- looking into that later :-)
- --
- M.T.Hamilton@lut.ac.uk | cp141@freenet.cleveland.edu | mhamilto@nyx.cs.du.edu
- Dept of Computer Studies, Loughborough University of Technology, LE11 3TU, UK
- +44.(0)509.224151 "Merry Christmas you giant beetle, you!" - m lippert.
-