Re: Eternity service proxies

[Lucky Green <shamrock@netcom.com>]

At 05:41 AM 5/1/97 +0100, Adam Back wrote:
>
>[btw what do people think of the practice of putting To: cypherpunks,
>and Bcc: coderpunks@toad, cryptography@c2 as I have done here? 

Works for me.
[...]
>My announce was rather hurried, and someone suggested to me the use of
>a proxy as an architecture for interfacing to the eternity service
>rather than the cgi based system I have.
>
>The person who suggested this to me also described some work on a
>"universal proxy framework" which is designed to enable things like
>"cookie-cutting, onion routing etc."  Also it was suggested this is a
>cheaper way to implement a proxy.
[...]

This is true for some value of cheaper. The proxy framework provides
services to the proxylets. Therefore it is cheaper to write a proxylet than
it is to write a proxy. However, the advantages of using a proxy framework
to enable multiple local proxies are not limited to reducing the work
effort of the proxylet author. The framework also would provide
registration services, which are pretty much a requirement for dynamically
loadable proxylets to exist on a machine without requiring user intervention.

After all, the proxies have to operate in a certain order to be functional.
This order would be hard to achieve without the proxies knowing about each
other. And since the proxies almost by definition have no idea what is
happening on the other side of that socket (or however you want to
implement the proxy-to-proxy interface), somebody needs to watch over them
to make sure they get used in the right sequence.

To give an example of a machine with a moderate number of client side
proxies, you might have

1. A DNS resolver proxy that intercepts the *.eternity TLD's.
2. The actual Eternity proxy that builds the NNTP requests.
3. A crypto proxy that encrypts the NNTP requests between the localhost and
a suitable NNTP server.
4. An Onion Router/Pipe-net/jondo proxy that allows for anonymous access of
the NNTP server.

And that's just for the Eternity service. Add to this a POP/SMTP proxy that
automatically encrypts/decrypts all mail, an https proxy that beefs up 40
bit SSL to 128 bits, a proxy that provides for on the fly decryption of
webpages that are _stored_ encrypted, and before you know it you have ten
proxies on a machine that all have to be used in a specific order.

Ten proxies that have no way of knowing about each other. A proxy framework
soon becomes a requirement.

>My ideal interface would have been a web proxy, as this allows the
>user to transparently integrate this into their browser.  You may be
>able to set your browser to use the proxy to handle *.eternity, and
>have the rest go direct, but I'm not so sure on this point.

Sure. The user should never have to use special tools to access
information. That's the beauty of using proxies. You use a standard browser
as front end. All the rest is taken care of transparently by the proxies.


-- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred

   "I do believe that where there is a choice only between cowardice and
    violence, I would advise violence." Mahatma Gandhi