Flexhub and a new sunrise for a common sun

[Pietry]

Today while doing my usual lurk around DC, I had a talk with FlipFlop and heard about his and Daywalker's project called Flexhub. It seems that Flexhub is the first project that really could make the bridge between the main protocols in DC, aka NMDC and ADC. Several tries have been made among the recent history, but nobody ever made actual success.

Flexhub is a hubsoft written in LUA that supports both protocols. Yeah, you read right. It bridges users and chat for now, and perhaps in the future it will have more. Flexhub is currently not intended for high performance, but for user friendliness. This means the project will have a nice GUI, as you can see in the screenshots.
We here at ADCPortal are looking forward to see the public beta available for download soon ( currently there is a test hub but not much to see ). The developers are working hard to get something on the market as soon as possible. However, the source code for flexhub is not yet available, and possible never to be. In a post some time ago , I adviced for releasing all free pieces of software as open source also. In my opinion this improves the relationship between user and developer, and also brings lots of advantages for developing, and for helping others, and in developing trust.

Our opinion is that Flexhub has the potential that no other hubsoft ever had. This software could mark the new era of the hybrid between networks, and make the transition to ADC easier than ever. We all hope that the developers will succeed in their goal. The screenshots look impressive and we already have a general positive impression about the software.
Keep it going !
Official Website

[adrian_007]

w00t the hell? adc and nmdc mix? o.o

good to see some new bits, but... lua + bridge between protocol = poor performance still with uhub at 1st place ^^

[Pietry]

Yes, flexhub is not yet intented for performance, probably 1000 users maximum, but still, it's a cool project and it shows that it's possible to make the transition from NMDC to ADC more simple. Most hubowners are afraid of ADC because they need to give up all their current NMDC users.

[adrian_007]

ah crap, i could change hubsoft to adc and i'd loose about 15 users (from 100 users) just because they're not supporting adc 1.0 - yeah, i forced many of them to update... but i'm only a admin, not a owner

yet, this is pretty good idea ^^

[Pietry]

You forget about how to convince them to change their address in favorites from dchub:// to adc:// That's the hard part in changing protocol.

[FlipFlop™]

If the dchub:// or adc:// switch is so hard to push through, then it might be an idea to make clients autodetect protocol? If dchub:// is used, just send an ISUP, and only when a $Lock is received use NMDC protocol. This will automatically be in favor of ADC since ISUP will be tried first. It's not the cleanest of solutions, and will only be effective when connecting to hybrid hubsofts like FlexHub, but the users can stay lazy the way they like it.

[FlipFlop™]

I've been to quick with that proposol, some nmdc hubsofts will disconnect when receiving any data before $Lock.

[blastbeat]

"However, the source code for flexhub is not yet available, and possible never to be"

why not?

[FlipFlop™]

Source might be available at some point, but for the near future we will be actively developping this hubsoft. To somewhat safeguard against too easy abuse of the software either internally or externally we are keeping the source closed for now.

[Pietry]

FlipFlop, indeed, autodetection in client would be great. However, the sole client that I know of implemented this feature is FlowLib and Flow's clients. I'm not sure if jUCy did ?
If future versions of DC++ would have this feature, then, no matter of the favorites settings , the client will connect to the hub if the protocol is changed at some time. Until then, such a hubsoft like flexhub might ease up the settings and allow client to connect regardless of their protocol handler ( dchub:// or adc://)