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by geezerjay 2899 days ago
> If you control the client, then there's absolutely no reason to use HTTP:

What about ensuring that your desired ports are opened and your connection won't be eaten by a random firewall because you happened to pick a closed port and the user doesn't want to be bothered with firewalls and your application suddenly is crap because it can't even get its network connection to work when every other alternative works out of the box?
1 comments
geocar 2899 days ago
What about it?

That's not a problem home-users have: They NAT.

Meanwhile in the enterprise, 80/443 is frequently locked into a particular (cheap) HTTP proxy server that can't manage basic features of HTTP correctly.

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geezerjay 2899 days ago
> That's not a problem home-users have:

Actually, it is.

Furthermore, I'm assuming you don't expect applications to work only in the confines of a lan.

There are strong reasons why HTTP is highly favoured for communication protocols. Heck, whole industry protocols have been scrapped in favour of HTTP-based ones for this problem alone. See RTP and why it has been abandoned by HTTP-based protocols such as MPEG-DASH, and why the industry made it their point to develop a whole new video streaming protocol based on HTTP.

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geocar 2899 days ago
> Actually, it is.

I'm saying almost all home-users have NAT and can communicate to remote services on most high ports.

If you're claiming otherwise, you should be able to provide some evidence to back that up.

> There are strong reasons why HTTP is highly favoured for communication protocols.

Yes. Like where they don't control the client, as in the part right after the part you quoted.

What exactly is your point?

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geezerjay 2897 days ago
>I'm saying almost all home-users have NAT and can communicate to remote services on most high ports.

Sorry, that's patently false and flies in the face of reality.

>If you're claiming otherwise, you should be able to provide some evidence to back that up.

You can start here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17569715

> Yes. Like where they don't control the client

That is patently false. The problems isn't caused by not controlling the client. The primary problem is that they don't control the network, which means each and every single node between client and server, and HTTP reduces or eliminates the chance that one of those nodes doesn't cooperate.

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