Interesting take on future file serving.

[Simo]

On Thu, 2015-10-01 at 10:22 -0700, Jeremy Allison wrote:
> Really interesting article here:
> 
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/01/aspera/
> 
> about how local storage could link to
> cloud storage. Might be a good jump-start
> for the Samba cloud-storage-gateway discussions.

It is an interest take, in a way, but nothing really new, it is well
know that HTTP/TCP is terribly inefficient for file access, let alone
when we add the S (as in HTTPS) in there.
HTTP/2 is trying to fix some of that and Google is going bonkers
experimenting with a new protocol of theirs that is similar to SCTP but
not quite.

Unfortunately the bigger issue is not that people are obstinate in
using HTTP/TCP, the reason why all public networking is bound to
HTTPS/TCP is ... <trumpets> firewalls.

Many networks block UDP outright, and some allow exclusively port 80
and 443, some outrageously firewall those too putting a proxy in
between and forcing you to use a CA of theirs to intercept HTTPS
traffic too ...

It is very hard to propose something efficient in these conditions, at
the very least you need something smart that can quickly fall back all
the way to the stupid slow HTTPS/TCP and, if necessary add your own
encryption on top of it ...

Simo