[SYSTEM] MUD / HTTPD Switcher

From: Raf (raf@redbrick.dcu.ie)
Date: 04/20/03


First of all, hello again - I've just rejoined the list after a year or
two absence. I subscribed in 1996, I think just a while after bpl11 had been
released, and I now notice that 3.1 has been released! So fair play and
congrats to Jeremy, Alex, George and Daniel for all the hard work.

Now thats over with, let's get to the signal rather than the noise :)

I was thinking recently about how many people can't play MUDs cause
they're behind a firewall, in college or work mainly.

What I'm wondering is, would it be feasible to create a sort of mini
daemon which handles TCP connections to port 80, and if its a HTTP request
forward it to apache (or whatever) on port 81, otherwise to a MUD on port
4000. I confess to knowing very little about TCP/IP, but I'd presume then
that any output from 4000/81 would have to go back out through 80. Is this
possible without a huge amount of work?

I can see it being a lot more feasible if the MUD itself were to just run
on port 80 and parse any incoming communication for a HTTP request. The
MUD could then just serve back whatever file, thus making the MUD itself a
very small HTTP server. You would of course lose all the features of a
proper daemon such as Apache then though.

I dunno really, its just the random thought of the day. If it were
possible, it would greatly expand a MUDs potential playerbase, without
compromising by having no webserver.  Perhaps someone with more network coding
experience will be able to help.

Thanks,
Raf

--
   +---------------------------------------------------------------+
   | FAQ: http://qsilver.queensu.ca/~fletchra/Circle/list-faq.html |
   | Archives: http://post.queensu.ca/listserv/wwwarch/circle.html |
   | Newbie List:  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/circle-newbies/   |
   +---------------------------------------------------------------+



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : 06/26/03 PDT