----- Original Message ----- From: "Alia Atlas" <[email protected]> To: "Joe Marcus Clarke" <[email protected]> Cc: <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2013 9:01 PM
> Hi Joe, > > Thanks for the detailed review and suggestions. Responses are in-line. > > Alia > > On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 6:57 AM, Joe Marcus Clarke <[email protected]>wrote: > <snip> > > Section 6.4: > > > > Each I2RS Client will have an identity; it can also have secondary > > identities to be used for troubleshooting. > > > > JMC: Each application will have a _unique_ identity. > > > > [Alia] Hmm, this ties into the discussion about how we want to handle > redundancy and recovery for clients. It's also a bit of a tautology - a > client is solely identified by its identity. I have changed it to say > that "Each I2RS Client will have a unique identity" - but that just helps > clarify the intent. I think that this nicely encapsulates a confusion between identity and identifier. Identifiers identify. Objects, in a very generic sense, have identity. Thus if a human being is an instance of an object, they may be identified, based on context, by SSN, passport number, name, name and date of birth, cell phone number etc; all could be valid identifiers: but equally, a cell phone number could be the identifier of a cell phone, which is associated with a function and multiple people, while the cell phone could also be identified by its IMEI so the determination of what is an identity, may take some consideration. This is often critical in security; you have a secure channel but with what? Is the identifier sufficient proof of the identity? Working with routers, you usually have multiple identifiers; the SNMP sysName is not (usually) the OSPF 32 bit router id, while the BGP Identifier (note, identifier) is different again. Identifiers exist within a namespace, with rules about syntax, uniqueness and so on (even if this are not made explicit). The revised I-D contains " A secondary identity is merely a unique, opaque identifier ..." and "An I2RS Client may supply a secondary opaque identity .. " I think that most uses of the word "identity" in this I-D are actually referring to "identifier" but at the same time, given that almost all routers have multiple identifiers (as above), then this issue, of the difference between identity and identifier needs making explicit in this I-D. Tom Petch (p.s. if you have multiple virtual routers in one physical router, how many identities are there? Discuss.) _______________________________________________ i2rs mailing list [email protected] https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/i2rs
