[whatwg] some thoughts on bring HTTP upon UDP: iWebPP - instant web p2p technology

[Ian Hickson]

On Wed, 14 Mar 2012, tom wrote:
> 
> AFAIK, WebRTC intends to setup P2P communication between browsers, then 
> carry video/audio/text media, etc.
> 
> Why we need WebRTC? Firstly, Web is the most popular network app, 
> secondly, video/voice brings the best user experience. But, the problem 
> is that HTTP runs on TCP by now, while P2P runs on UDP normally.
> 
> Suppose both web browser and server can run HTTP upon UDP(the protocol 
> schema as HTTPP), what happens? Firstly, Web app developers can program 
> HTTPP like HTTP, secondly, P2P traffic can be carried on HTTPP easily.
> 
> Basically iWebPP consists of two parts: HTTPP-enabled web browser and 
> web server.
> 
> Any thoughts? thanks.

On Wed, 14 Mar 2012, Julian Reschke wrote:
> 
> Well, declaring that it should use UDP alone won't make it happen. It 
> obviously will work nicely for small messages that are idempotent (so 
> they can be retransmitted safely), but things get complicated beyond 
> that.
> 
> There's also previous work to study; for instance Microsoft has used 
> HTTP over UDP for notifications in the past.
> 
> A good place to bring this up might be the HTTPbis Working Group, which 
> will be looking at what HTTP/2.0 might be very soon.

I haven't added anything to the HTML spec on this. If you want to pursue 
this kind of feature, I recommend doing as Julian suggests, or, even 
better, approaching browser vendors directly and having them experiment 
with ideas in this area.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
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