Applications Messaging Standard

[Alasdair Allan]

Patrick Dowler wrote:
> On a multi-user machine, the initial hand-shake could exchange the  
> user-name
> to make sure client and hub are running under the same user  
> (spoofable, but
> we aren't trying to make this overly secure, just simple for users).
>
> If there is a collision on the port in a multi-user environment, just
> increment the port number and try again. So clients and hubs start by
> connecting to port N and checking the user; if they connect and  
> find the same
> user is running the hub, the client proceeds and the (2nd) hub  
> terminates
> quietly (or not). If the new hub doesn't find anything, it tries to  
> take the
> port (starts listening). If the client or hub finds a hub but user  
> doesn't
> match, they try again on port N+1. If the client doesn't find a  
> hub, it
> probably has to check higher port numbers (in case that users hub  
> was not the
> first to start and hence is on port N+something).

Although it does add a fair amount of complexity into the client side  
to allow the initial handshaking to work successfully, I actually  
quite like this idea.

Al.