[DGD] DGD http daemon?

[Bart van Leeuwen]

httptunnel would be very usefull to get around firewalls indeed, and would
remove some of the nastyness of a telnet like client running in a browser.
Also, it might just solve the underlying issue with http, the fact that a
connection close is a valid, and at times mandatory way in http to signal
the end of a message. I assume that httptunnel deals with this and does
not break the tunnel as a result?

My main interest in making a web interface is not related to firewalls
however but to making text MUDs easy to access for a broader public that
doesn't really know about, or does not want to bother with telnet. They
may still switch to using it after having gotten into the game, but as
introduction to text based MUDs telnet is a bit of an obstacle (many
people who havent been around on the net for a long time or are interested
in unix like systems etc consider it rather obscure, and a command based
game itself is already obscure enough for them)

The other reason why I am interested in http for a mud is to be able to
publish stats and other information from inside the mud on the web as well
as making mail and discussion boards available with an easy to use
(graphical) interface. This was actually my primary interest so far.

But again, httptunnel looks interesting for getting around a firewall, and
it might not be that difficult to implement. The code I have so far allows
you to basicly take over inmediately after the http request is received
and put in a mapping, and allows you to generate your own answers,
including your own headers, so a plugin that supports
httptunnel should at least in theory be possible with it.

A small status update, I am approx halfway with writing the documentation.
I hope to finish it during the next weekend and have the code and docs
available by the middle of next week.

Bart.

On Sun, 13 Feb 2005, Christopher
Allen wrote:

> Christopher Allen wrote:
>
> >On Tuesday, February 08, 2005 12:27 PM Stephen Schmidt <> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>I gather this daemon runs alongside of the mud, but the players still
> >>connect and play via the telnet protocol.
> >>Could this daemon be extended so that the players played primarily
> >>through the http protocol, probably using the telnet side only for
> >>communications (which are hard to implement in http)?
> >>
> >>There are all kinds of design-related problems with using a primarily
> >>http interface for playing the game; those don't interest me so much.
> >>The question is really whether this daemon could be the basis for
> >>code support for such a design. If it is, then having a version for a
> >>general DGD kernel (or even a specific kernel that could be released
> >>as a package with the daemon) would be extremely useful.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >There are some advantages for simulating telnet through http -- you can then
> >work with proxies and such. We've had a lot of problems with players
> >attempting to connect from work, for instance. For now, many cheap firewalls
> >don't block port 443 (https) so that relieves some of the problem. I know of
> >at least one company that did that, faked http traffic enough that stateful
> >firewall proxies would pass it on, but to the user was just like telnet.
> >
> >
> Just FYI, gnu httptunnel implemented in DGD and a client, would allow
> telnet-style traffic to go through firewalls:
>
> http://www.nocrew.org/software/httptunnel.html
>
> -- Christopher Allen
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