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Python and Napster

Moshe Zadka moshez at zadka.site.co.il
Wed Dec 27 12:39:05 EST 2000 
On Wed, 27 Dec 2000, "Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote:

> HTTP (and the Python tools around it) is great for file transfer (and
> suchlike) but it's not oriented to peer-to-peer at all.

Well, yeah, you'd have to implement the low-level part of peer-to-peer.
But the HTTP infrastructure is usually enough for that: broadcast by
performing a GET /?file=name to say you have a file called "name"
and the nameing service turns out to be composed of 302 redirects.

> I think that actually transferring a file's data and metadata, once
> you have a proxy for a remote object, is no big issue.  It seems to
> me that naming, exceptions, resuming transfer (not supported by HTTP,
> is it?)

You have insulted the prophet: your punishment shall be cruel indeed!
Of course HTTP supports resuming transfer. SimpleHTTPServer doesn't
though. I don't think it should be hard to add, though.

An advantage of HTTP is that it will be possible to use the protocol
with clients not written in Python. If what he wants is simple file
exchange, there is no reason to be limited to Python at the protocol
level.
-- 
Moshe Zadka <sig at zadka.site.co.il>
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