At 8:11 AM -0800 3/23/01, Paul Francis wrote:
>When I presented the near-unique stuff in IETF50 yesterday, Deering stated
>from the mike that a site is a location in space (geographical region,
>whatever...I don't remember Steve's exact wording). This had me totally
>baffled---and it isn't fun to be baffled in front of a couple hundred
>people.
Sorry, Paul. It is not at all your fault that you didn't know what
this amorphous "site" thing is, and I apologize for blindsiding you
in the meeting. (Though I *was* hoping to blindside you with
the flaw I found in your proposal, but you deprived my of that
pleasure by discovering it yourself. :-)
The lack of a proper description and common understanding of what
"sites" are is indeed a serious oversight (no pun intended). I sort
of assumed that people would understand what was intended from the
normal English meaning of the word "site", as in building site or
job site. But that was clearly a flawed assumption on my part.
Perhaps the more recent jargon term "web site" has muddied the
connotation?
>I could continue to wade through IPv6 specs to find the definition of site.
>But at this point I don't think the onus is on me to do so. Rather Steve I
>think the burden is on you to point me to this illusive piece of text that
>defines what a site is.
The "IP Version 6 Scoped Address Architecture" draft, the most recent
version of which is draft-ietf-ipngwg-scoping-arch-02.txt, contains
the best definition so far, buried in an itemized list of the three
unicast scopes (in Section 4):
o Site-local scope, for uniquely identifying interfaces
within a single site only. A "site" is, by intent, not
rigorously defined, but is typically expected to cover a
region of topology that belongs to a single organization
and is located within a single geographic location, such
as an office, an office complex, or a campus. A personal
residence may be treated as a site (for example, when the
residence obtains Internet access via a public Internet
service provider), or as a part of a site (for example,
when the residence obtains Internet access via an
employer's or school's site).
I have a hunch that you, and probably many others, will still find this
description less than satisfying, preferring a simple, concrete rule for
defining a site, but perhaps you can at least get a glimmer of the
general notion that has been mostly buried in my mind and inadequately
documented so far.
Steve
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