Re: [boost] sockets /network programming Requirements

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-07-31 19:22:01

At 10:19 AM 7/31/2001, Iain.Hanson_at_[hidden] wrote:

 >     Protocol.
 >
 >     The requirements currently say that the library should be (
 >     predominantly ) restricted to IPv4 & IPv6. I would expect the 
initail
 >     implementation to be based on IPv4 as the is the most used of 
network
 >     protocols. However, it would be a mistake IMO, to not take other 
main
 >     stream but less popular protocols into account, for the requirements 

 >     and design. C++ and its libraries have, as far as I can see, always
 >     attempted to be inclusive rather than exclusive. Excluding other
 >     protocols from consideration in the requirements and design is 
likely
 >     to be detremental to the generality of such a design and is some 
what
 >     akin to saying we'll exclude the requirements for real-time systems
 >     because thay are not main stream.
 >
 >     Protocols that I believe should *at least* be considered in the 
design
 >
 >     are: OSI, SS7, and ATM. If anyone has any additions to this list, 
I'd
 >     be interested to here them.

Please consider the requirements a "straw man" meant to start 
discussion.  Thus if you have experience that says they should be changed, 
by all means do so.

I was trying to avoid expanding the requirements to include areas outside 
of "network programming".  The sockets interface could be viewed as a 
general read/write interface, and so feature creep might expand the library 
way outside of the network programming arena.  Personally, I don't think 
that would be a good idea, particularly for version 1.  But if it can be 
expanded to handle other network protocols, without distorting the design 
otherwise, that would seem to be a clear win.

--Beman