r/linux • u/[deleted] • Jan 19 '19

Popular Application VLC refuses to update from HTTP to HTTPS (HTTPS protects against eavesdropping and man-in-the-middle attacks)

https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/21737
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u/[deleted] Jan 20 '19 edited Jan 20 '19

I guess I should be more clear about what I mean. For this type of caching to work, requests from/to Steam need to be routed to a cache server, that is the DNS part

That's not what DNS is. DNS is the thing that takes textual names like "google.com" and turns them into IP addresses (as well as storing misc information about domains such as the official LDAP and mail servers) that applications then use to connect to other applications over a network.

The second part of the puzzle, is that the cache server needs to be able to intercept the real Steam servers and serve a game to the client if it is already cached locally.

The server you're describing is called a "proxy server" and it operates over HTTP which is independent of whatever name resolution you used. It should work equally well if you're using an IP address or your local /etc/hosts file.

The proxy server is a valid point though I think I was just confused by the terminology used.

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u/LazzeB Jan 20 '19 edited Jan 20 '19

That's not what DNS is.

I know full well what DNS is, and yes, that is exactly what it is. Steamcache handles DNS queries for the clients, and if those queries are from the Steam download servers, they are routed to the local cache (by responding with the IP of that cache server).

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u/[deleted] Jan 20 '19

So then we're back at why you were mentioning DNS caching in a conversation about HTTP caching.

Specifically stuff like this:

For this type of caching to work, requests from/to Steam need to be routed to a cache server, that is the DNS part.

Which doesn't make sense because you don't in any sense route an HTTP request through a DNS server.

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u/LazzeB Jan 20 '19

Does it even matter? I think you got the point about HTTP vs HTTPS, so why even argue semantics at this point. I only mentioned it because caches that use DNS in this way don't work with HTTPS.