On Thu, 17 Mar 2016, Christopher Barry wrote:
Should all network applications behave in this manner, detecting and internally adjusting to network modification? Would this not lead to myriad implementations and redundancies? Is it in fact the domain of network *applications* to do this?
I don't think I can speak for all network applications, but I think all applications that have long lived connections to remote servers, where the application travels in and out of networks while running, where there are network interfaces coming and going and for which networks expose different "realities" or "views" of the world depending on which network you're on will benefit from acting on network changes.
By being aware of network changes and adapting to them, we actually improve the user experience quite significantly thanks to less stalled connections that require the user to either just wait out or shift-reload to fix, with less old/wrong content sticking around and surviving into the new network while it was only actually true in the former network and we increase responsiveness for proxies (when moving in/out of "proxy controlled" networks).
If we don't react to network changes appropriately, users suffer.
Isn't this a systems function that should be left to the system itself?
Yes, if that worked it'd be aweseome but as it is now, the stack works in one way and we need to give it some gentle pushes to act more in ways we like.
I seem to remember another out-of-scope foray where FF was using built-in dns server addresses behind the user's back a while ago, and *bypassing* the specific servers set by the administrator. Is that still happening too?
Sorry, I don't know what you're referring to so I don't know and can't comment on that specific thing. But of course we're not strangers to trying out things in any area, if we think it improves functionality or user experience etc. Experiments of course by their nature don't always pan out successful.
Do you see a problem not being addressed by the system, are frustrated that your efforts to help change it there are not being addressed, and thus are creating these homegrown workarounds? Why is this even an issue? Why does it actually matter which interface you are communicating through?
It isn't important which network interface Firefox is using. We're detecting that there is a *network change*. Any network change. And when such a change has happened we act on that information. It is for example very common for networks to have private DNS spaces, to show different views of the same site and more depending on which network you are on. And it is also common that connections get stalled in the actual process of switching networks and the regular way to detect that is very slow and that slowness leads to frustrated users.
This is just one of those tiny little details ordinary humans don't need to bother or care about.
Firefox is by the way not the only browser detecting network changes and acting on them.
This kind of stuff is out-of-authorized-and-expected-scope for a user program, and frankly is more than a little creepy.
Sorry, I don't understand. Exactly how is this creepy and why? There's really no magic involved here.
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