#132602 netselect: http and ftp proxy support missing

Package:
netselect
Source:
netselect
Description:
speed tester for choosing a fast network server
Submitter:
Date:
2010-10-25 07:36:08 UTC
Severity:
normal
#132602#5
Date:
2002-02-06 14:44:14 UTC
From:
To:
  netselect does not work for me, since I am behind a firewall.

  Either a ftp or http proxy should be used, best using the
  environment variables ftp_proxy and http_proxy, or a port that goes
  through, e.g. 22 (ssh), should be used.

  Greetings, Heiko
#132602#10
Date:
2002-02-06 15:02:22 UTC
From:
To:
It is completely not possible for the netselect algorithm to work over a
proxy or ssh.

Does 'ping' work from behind your firewall?

Avery
#132602#15
Date:
2002-02-06 15:02:22 UTC
From:
To:
It is completely not possible for the netselect algorithm to work over a
proxy or ssh.

Does 'ping' work from behind your firewall?

Avery
#132602#22
Date:
2010-10-25 07:30:40 UTC
From:
To:
tags 132602 moreinfo
thanks

More information is needed to solve this bug in netselect. What is the
issue that prevents netselect from working? Is it the firewall
dropping UDP probes?

Due to the way that netselect currently behaves, it is not possible to
use an http or ftp proxy as it directly attempts a UDP connection to
the host. It could be possible to implemented, however, use of a proxy
but then it woul need to "simulate" an HTTP or FTP connection through
the proxy in order to estimate the round trip time through the proxy
host to the end server.

This implementation based on the current netselect code is, however,
not that straightforward.  Instead of sending a probe and waiting for
a reply it would need to open a socket, send a small request (such as
'HEAD / HTTP/1.0') and wait for the answer. Implementing this in a
non-blocking way is tricky, however.


Regards

Javier