Big Changes to JXTA Configuration

Posted by bondolo on November 2, 2004 at 12:05 PM EST

There has been a lot of recent work on improving and simplifying the JXTA configuration process. A lot of the work has focused on the extension config package, but there are big changes in the "classic" JXTA Configuration Dialog too.

But isn't the "classic" AWT config dialog obsolete? Yep, it is in most ways. We're no longer trying to put ever configuration feature into it. However the classic config dialog included some special configuration logic that had never been extracted into the general configuration efforts.

So while the configuration UI has changed a lot in these recent efforts, the more significant part is all of the refactoring behind the scenes. The upside is that all configuration mechanisms can now benefit from the extended configuration support.

There is one new significant change to the configuration process worth mentioning. The configuration UI no longer downloads the lists of seed Relays and Rendezvous. Instead, you can specify URIs from which to load the seeds and they will be updated dynamically at runtime by the actual relay and rendezvous services as needed. This functionality greatly improves the effectiveness of seeding since it's no longer a one time thing.

This new seeding functionality is just an interim step though. The long term plan is to remove seeding lists and provide better mechanisms for peers to get referral seed lists from other peers. This proposed functionality will require changes to the rendezvous and relay protocols and some restructuring of the services themselves though and we haven't yet developed an implementation plan.

Simpler, stronger, cleaner!