On 01/06/2018 00:07, David R. Oran wrote: > On 30 May 2018, at 19:39, Brian E Carpenter wrote: > >> On 31/05/2018 08:53, Juliusz Chroboczek wrote: >>>> Well, let me invent something. I throw together my network and >>>> it >>>> names the printers as printer1 and printer2. Being a stickler, >>>> I decide to rename them as Printer 1 and Printer 2. I mess >>>> around >>>> and find a config file somewhere and manually edit it. >>> >>> Let me rephrase it: >>> >>> « For her birthday, I bought my girlfriend the nice printer she's >>> been >>> wanting. The network named it "Printer7839cf31". Since I love my >>> girlfriend, I renamed it to "Mathilda's printer". Now she can no >>> longer >>> print. » >>> >>>> It would be good if you could come up with a real example. This >>>> isn't >>>> going to happen in practice, >>> >>> (Giggle.) >> >> We'll see. As it says in every good shop: the customer is always >> right. >> > Apple doesn’t think so and it may at least partially account for the > fact that their products successfully auto-configure way more frequently > than those of the competition.
I'm not sure that's as true as it used to be; my recent experiences with attaching off-the-shelf printers to another o/s have been positive. However, that's with very simple network topology. > If there’s a lesson to be learned from this example it’s that either > you don’t allow automatically-named things to change their names, or > if you provide a user-friendly feature to change the name it “just > works” and doesn’t break the associated function. I guess this means > that if you rely on DNS to discover and use names, then you provide an > update API and not allow “write-behind” to config files (if they > exist in the first place). I agree. Without the ability for users to attach names of their choice (in scripts of their choice) to devices, there will be millions of unhappy users. > Now, if the name-changing auto-configuration functions are broken, then > either there has to be a way to diagnose it (maybe only by the people > who sold you the printer) and a way to revert to the prior > configuration. That diagnostic function does in my view not have to be > something easily done by the home user. Are you sure? The people who sell you printers today operate on very tight profit margins. In practice, I don't think expert diagnosis is a realistic expectation. Regards Brian _______________________________________________ homenet mailing list homenet@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/homenet