Tony, TH> The discussions on the multi6 mail list TH> have basically been about how the routing community believes the address TH> is the topology locator, while your & Dave's comments show the app TH> community believes it is an identifier.
By definition, an address is a topology indicator. Always. The point that I was trying to make is that the uniqueness of an address's bits permits its use as an uninterrupted label, ie, a name. (Up a few layers, this is the basis for including URL's in the set of URI's.) So this is not about competing definitions of the bits, but different USES of them. IP needs to interpret those bits. Hence, it MUST handle them as topological indicators. Apps that use IP addresses use them as simple labels. TH> Where the two communities agree TH> is that the DNS as currently deployed and operated is not up to the task TH> of handling the identifier role. My point is that this is due more to TH> implementation & operation than architecture. Responding to this point takes us into the world of solutions. I suspect we will all find this topic more productive (and probably more pleasant) when we move into that mode. TH> Also I believe the multi6 TH> discussion about creating a new identifier, to get the app community to TH> stop camping on the topology locator, will end up creating a distributed TH> database infrastructure almost identical to DNS. We don't need two of TH> those, so we should fix DNS. That was my own view roughly 10 years ago, when Noel Chiappa was pushing for use of an end-point identifier, as part of what is now IPv6. At this stage, I would want to hear the requirements (or probably better, the desired usage scenarios) before being certain that a modified DNS is the answer. TH> I disagree with the perspective that subnetting or CIDR changed the TH> character of the address. Before: IP addresses contained no topological information. After: IP addresses contained quite a bit of topological information AND that information was (is) used quite heavily. A change that permits a routing table to be reduced massively necessarily involves changing the character of something. d/ -- Dave Crocker <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Brandenburg InternetWorking <http://www.brandenburg.com> Sunnyvale, CA USA <tel:+1.408.246.8253>, <fax:+1.866.358.5301>
