Re: Re: xPL Monitor: triple msgs

["John B" <home-automation@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Tom,

> > However, if you leave your PC wide open to the Internet, you're
likely to
> > run into bigger problems than people just turning your X10
modules on and
> > off - you're likely to get infected by a worm/virus long before
anyone finds
> > your xPL port is open.
> >
> > If your PC is protected by a firewall (as all Internet-connected
PCs should
> > be) and you haven't specifically opened port 3865 (which you
shouldn't!)
> > then there should be no problem with people being able to control
your xPL
> > devices.
>
> Hehe, on the one hand you want ease-of-use, but on the other hand you
> argue that users should have a firewall configured.
> If you can configure a firewall you definitely can configure an xpl
> device to listen to a specific port.

Fair point :-)

> > - The base port is our official IANA-allocated port - and I can't
think of a
> > reason why it should ever be changed (though if you had a reason
in mind,
> > please let me know in case I haven't thought of something).
>
> For the same reason as port 80 being the default for http, but luckily
> configurable on any decent webserver.

But HTTP is not a distributed protocol - it is point-to-point.

If you changed the base port of your hub, you'd need to change the base
port used by every other node on your xPL network.

> If it is not absolutely mandatory, then put it in a config file.

I guess it wouldn't do any harm to make it an optional configurable item -
we could put it in the .config file along with the binding IP.

> Maybe some users need to pass a firewall that blocks that port ?
> Dunno.

Maybe - but remember that we're dealing with a broadcast protocol intended
for LANs, so it's unlikely that firewalls would need to be traversed.

> -> > - send the message to the configured address not the
loopback address
> >
> > The message is *supposed* to go to the loopback address.
> > Hub clients bind to a dynamic port on the loopback address, and
the hub
> > sends messages to those ports on the loopback address.
>
> Ok, I don't know enough about how a msg to a loopback address behaves
> different than that to a "real" address.  There probably is
a good
> reason.

A hub only broadcasts messages to hub clients running on the local host,
which is why it sends to the loopback address only.

Regards,

John