60337 - Proxy support plan needed, then preferences

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 89928

(Core :: Networking, defect, P3)

Description

[[e-mail]]

Proxy support for mozilla needs to be re-thought from the bottom up, if not for
Mozilla 1.0, then certainly for any future releases.

A couple good reasons:

1- Parity with Navigator 4 is incomplete. Some of the more notable bugs are lack
of snews proxy support (56291) and lack of gopher support (49334).

2- Even full parity was achieved, this feature set was an incomplete set of
compromises that probably should be revised.

3- A variety of good enhancements both features and new protocols (IM, chat,
ldap, you name it) need to be added to the feature set. An internal preferences
architecture that it extensible + some common interface guidelines are needed.

For example, somebody needs to put their foot down and come up with an single,
official name for "SSL Tunneling", "HTTPS" (as AIM calls it), "Security" (as
Navigator 4 calls it) or "SSL Proxy" (as it appears in Mozilla/NS6).

4- Proxying protocol implementations have always been driven by a
chicken-and-egg problem, and mozilla should probably drive a push to support
SOCKS5 and obsolesce SSL tunneling. Some people also want increased SSL support
between the client and proxy server, to preven the theft of clear text passwords
that are common in HTTP, FTP, POP and IMAP.

Some of these implementations are logical applications of multiple, existing
standards, and the economics of the server business mean that client adoption
(or at least endorsement) is needed to jump-start the process.

Comment 1

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

benc, please provide more detail.

> obsolesce SSL tunneling

?

Comment 2

[[e-mail]]

Both SSL and SOCKS V4 are not defined by RFC's. They also seem to have 
significant limitations in functionality and security.

From a protocol perspective, I think that moving to strong support of only SOCKS 
 V5 support would be ideal.

Probably a big factor would be what iPlanet does with their next release of 
Proxy Server, the most recent version (3.5) implemented SSL Tunneling and SOCKS 
V5, but SOCKS V5 never seemed to work.

My recollections from talking with Ari is that SSL Tunneling was never meant to 
do anything then get Netscape out of a jam w/ getting SSL to work with the 
Proxy. If you read the draft document, you can see he describes signficant 
limitations to it's usage.

Comment 3

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Mass-change: Do not remove nominations (even if Milestone passed). Readding
mozilla0.8 nomination.

Comment 4

[Tom Everingham]

setting benc as qa contact

Comment 5

[benc]

RESOLVED/DUPE:
The existing proxy prefs behavior is not going to change much between now and
Mozilla 1.0, and an effective future solution to all these problems would be to
implement bug 89928.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 89928 ***

Comment 6

[benc]

VERIFIED/dupe: my bug, so I'm verifying.

Comment 7

[benc]

.