Lots of good stuff.
It's attractive in some respects to have everybody doing the same
thing, and HTTP is in the lead.
But if we're going to try to boil the web down to one protocol,
let's get it right:
* cut out the TCP connection set-up time by using a UDP
based protocol like prospero/ARDP.
* put authentication and compression in the transport
layer (ARDP).
* Allow for replicated servers and objects.
* Separate object names from network locations
* Support data authentication (MD5 checksums, digital
signatures, etc.)
I don't think we can do all this with HTTP in the short term. In
the mean time, "Let a thousand flowers bloom."
The relavance feedback in the WAIS protocol, along with the
original-server/distributor-server distinctions are features that
I don't want lost from the web. NNTP has some features we shouldn't
lose either (though it should be revised to use a request-response
protocol like ARDP rather than a session based protocol like TCP).
On the other hand, I won't miss FTP or gopher. Not that there's anything
wrong with them, but their functionality is subsumed by HTTP.
Dan