01/21/09 (working on the future beta 10 p, test version)

Here is a summary of some of the changes planned for the next test release, concerning the servers.

A public server should require less maintenance:
- if a server fails to get its IP address from a what-is-my-ip website (no Internet or what-is-my-ip website down), it won't stop anymore: it will just log a warning and send an empty address to the metaserver, letting the metaserver guess the IP address;
- if, on startup, a server fails to register to the metaserver (no Internet or metaserver down), it won't stop anymore: it will just log a warning and try again later;
This way, the server will have the priority to stay up. The admin will be informed by the log or by users anyway.

In the long term, the system should be maintainable without me if something breaks, by repackaging the client and providing a new metaserver:
- the URL of the what-is-my-ip website and the URL of the metaserver will be stored in a text file;
- the files for a metaserver will be provided (at least a simple metaserver)

The system should be up as often as possible (avoid downtime):
- if a client fails to get the servers list from the metaserver (metaserver down), it will fall back on a static list stored in a text file provided with the client; this list will contain the public servers;

These changes should be small enough to keep the stability of the previous release.