On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 03:44:51AM +1100, Aristedes Maniatis wrote: > That makes no sense at all. IP allocation isn't about the latitude and > longitude of the building your DSL connection terminates in, it is about > routing tables which need to be kept to a reasonable size.
Though this will out me as a lunatic, sufficiently mature networking will follow relativistic signalling constraints and economic constraints on old-growth connectivity, and hence asymptotically approach a mesh which follows geography (with connectivity decaying with distance), a particular packet header layout (routing decision done while minimal number of header bits stream past router, vacuum or glass used as FIFO) and purely-local-knowledge routing, which doesn't have route tables worth speaking of (possibly represented as defects/deviation from ideality, as defects on a higher-dimensional lattic which is pressed flat on Earth surface or into air/orbital space). Of course our networking is pretty far remote from being mature. Still, it's a pity that IPv6 chose only an incremental improvement, instead of a radical departure, where legacy protocols are tunneled through the next-gen network. It seems that IPv6, slow as its adoption is will turn out a rather short-lived stop-gap measure. > Now, if IP packets were carried by homing pigeons, spatial addressing would > be a good idea. Whether it's purely photonic networks, or LoS lasers in orbital node assemblies, or 802.11n meshes, or carrier pigeons bearing flash, the logic is the same. Arguably L2 stuff like MAC assigment would do for spatial/geographic routing, at least coarsely. Much simpler than meshing L3/L4 switches. Ok, where are my meds now? -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: discussion-unsubscr...@pfsense.com For additional commands, e-mail: discussion-h...@pfsense.com Commercial support available - https://portal.pfsense.org