Photo - ZU photography - Unsplash
What is this protocol
Gemini is a speed-oriented client / server file transfer protocol. In a sense, it is a replacement for the WWW. Its author is an engineer hiding under the nickname Solderpunk . But in the development of the protocol is actively involved IT community - for example, the contribution made creator of the open wiki is Oddmuse Alex Schroeder (Alex Schroeder).
How does it work
Gemini's implementation resembles Gopher . This is a protocol that was popular in the early 1990s and served as a kind of replacement for FTP. On its basis , a system for disseminating information was built from a group of hyperlinked menus - with directories, files and links to other pages. The pages themselves were without design and scripts.
The situation is similar in Gemini - the protocol response contains only text or binary data. It does not support compression, message splitting, and network coding techniques. The server closes the connection immediately after transmitting the last byte and does not send an end of response message . Gemini requires all transactions to be made using TLS 1.2 or higher.
The protocol operates over TCP / IP with port 1965 and has a resource identifier of the same name ( URI ). Its syntax is specified in RFC 3986 . The URL is UTF-8 encoded and has a maximum length of 1024 bytes.
What do they think of the protocol
In a thread on Hacker News, they expressed the opinion that the new protocol could become an alternative to WWW - at least for hosting personal sites and blogs. An important role in this can play a clear specification , which relatively easy to understand .
Photo - Sourabh Gijare - Unsplash
There was also an alternative opinion. Gemini is a reimagining of the Gopher protocol that is about 30 years old. A return to the origins of the Internet for some looks like a step backward in technology. Although many of Gopher's problems were resolved by the Gemini developers - for example, they added redirects if the content on the link was moved, and MIME support-types.
Who implements in practice
Gemini uses several sites - for example, Gemini_Wiki describing the protocol capabilities, developed by the already mentioned Alex Schroeder. Although the site can be displayed using familiar HTTP and HTML.
There is also a dedicated Castor browser written in Rust. It supports the Gemini and Gopher protocols and is uploaded to the SourceHut collaborative development platform. By the way, Firefox was one of the last browsers to support Gopher, but this feature was removed in 2010 . Now some enthusiasts are gradually returning the lost functionality.
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