Re: CAB-for-MiNTNet overlay 1.82

[chu@platinum.com (Howard Chu)]

  Hello,

  I received the updated overlay and it now works fine with the other
  modules. I'm very pleased.

Howdy. I'm glad to hear that it's working properly. Tell me, have you
tried the CABDLOAD module yet? It appears to hang when I use it. Oddly
enough, when you hit the Stop/Cancel button, the transfer begins, and
if you don't dismiss the "Aborted" alert right away, the transfer will
complete successfully, except that the saved filename is garbage. I'm
not sure what the problem is yet, I've had very little experience testing
the overlay with anything except CAB itself.

  I recall you mentioning on the usenet that you would be adding support for
  authorisation (is that what you call it?) to the overlay. I would find
  that useful from time to time.

  What else is happening to the overlay at the moment?

At the moment it's undergoing a major overhaul. I have had to completely
redesign my URL caching scheme to accomodate authorization/authentication
and cookie info. At the same time I'm adding the other major missing piece
of HTTP/1.1 - reusable connections. This feature will allow multiple requests
to go over a single TCP connection, which will boost throughput tremendously
for pages with a lot of images loading from the same server. My tests so far
show that the typical HTTP 1.1 server times out the connection after 10
seconds, so this won't speed up access to a particular server if e.g. you
get a page, spend a while viewing it, and then click on another one of its
links. At the same time, I'm restructuring the code so that the HTTP-specific
management is separate from the MiNTnet-specific code. This should make it
easier for STiK/STiNG hackers to adapt my HTTP/1.1 support. (This overhaul
was long overdue; up till now I was just poking and prodding at Dancer's
original programming structure. It probably suited his mentality just fine,
but it's time to really make it the way I think it should be...)

Currently I am still keeping cache info in RAM only, not saving any of it
on disk. Also, cache size parameters will be in static variables. As an
update further down the road, I will add a real config file for setting
cache size, cookie management options, etc.

Howard Chu - Principal Member/Tech Staff - PLATINUM technology, Los Angeles Lab
hyc@locus.com,chu@platinum.com	      visit my band! http://www.highlandsun.com