A networking project exploring real-time socket programming and legacy internet protocols.
Developed in 2025 as part of a university course on systems and networking.
This project implements a client for the Gopher protocol (RFC 1436) using native Java sockets. It recursively crawls a remote Gopher server, downloads files, classifies content, and handles edge cases such as timeouts, invalid links, and non-responsive servers.
- 📡 Connects using raw TCP sockets (no libraries)
- 🔁 Recursively indexes files and directories
- 🧠 Differentiates text, binary, and informational items
- 🧱 Handles errors: tarpits, timeouts, firehoses, loops
- 📊 Logs stats like smallest/largest files, counts, and server references
| File | Purpose |
|---|---|
GopherClient.java |
Main crawler logic and connection manager |
GopherFileCatcher.java |
Download and timeout handling |
GopherItem.java |
Represents parsed Gopher menu entries |
GopherStats.java |
Tracks file counts, sizes, and logs output |
[Wed Apr 24 17:35:02 AEST 2025] Sending selector: "/RFC 1436" Found binary file: /misc/bootimage.img Skipping tarpit (slow response): /misc/godot
javac src/*.java
java src/GopherClient- Built a real-world network client using low-level Java socket programming
- Understood and implemented a legacy internet protocol from its RFC
- Designed fault-tolerant systems for unreliable servers (timeouts, retries, tarpits)
- Practiced recursive crawling, file classification, and robust logging
This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.
- Clone the repo
- Update the server IP/port in
GopherClient.javaif needed - Run it > Note: The original server used in this project was a private university-hosted Gopher server and may no longer be accessible. You can configure your own Gopher server locally for testing if needed.