On 2019-04-23 12:55, Martin Bjorklund wrote:
Kristian Larsson <[email protected]> wrote:
On 2019-04-18 14:18, Martin Bjorklund wrote:
Juergen Schoenwaelder <[email protected]> wrote:
On Thu, Apr 18, 2019 at 10:41:11AM +0200, Ladislav Lhotka wrote:
I am not in favour of adding this type. Having ip-prefix next to
ip-address-and-prefix is confusing.
Confusing or not, they are NOT interchangeable and actually do
different
things, which is why both are needed. There's plenty of precedence to
I actually agree with you. It is a historical accident that these
two different things got mixed up (and some vendors contributed to
this). I would argue that
- IP prefix is a set of IP addresses, and as such can be thought of
as a single entity.
- IP address and subnet mask/prefix are two separate things, the
latter being an instruction for routing to *other* destination
addresses.
I think we should be pragmatic. There are other common types that are
in fact constructed out of simpler types, date-and-time is a prime
example of a type constructed out of a date value and a time value.
I think that date-and-time represents one thing - a single point in
time.
Convenient for users to enter a single point in time in terms of year,
month, day, hours, minutes and seconds, perhaps. But not as convenient
for a program that needs to compare two date-and-times.
Actually, *comparing* works quite ok, but calculating diff is not as
easy.
By relying on the lexical order? Time zone is at the end so it will
probably mess things up. Maybe that's why you said only *quite* ok.
Speaking of time-zone, shouldn't that be modeled as a separate leaf?
I think you could probably have a conversation around the combination or
split of time / time-zone rather similar to the conversation we are
having here about the combination or split of address / prefix-length.
Clearly for a
program comparing times against each other we must represent a point
in time as the number of vibrations of cesium since an arbitrarily
chosen epoch.
We do have yang:timeticks as well. In some cases that's a better type
than yang:date-and-time.
In some cases it might be better to have a ip*-address-and-prefix-length
type than two separate leaves ;)
is sometimes convenient to treat something that is in fact constructed
as an atomic value.
Convenient for users that enter these values, perhaps. But not as
convenient for a program (or a filter) that needs one of the combined
values.
Really? Are you using a text representation of IP addresses when you
handle them in your program?
If you are to deal with IP addresses, prefixes etc in a robust way in
your program, you need an internal datatype that understands what an
address is - it needs to handle it as bits and massage it to any other
presentation you want. It needs to understand relevant comparisons and
operations, like is prefix A contained in prefix B?
I agree. Note that I wrote *filter* above. It also extends to
must/when expressions. The problem is that these mechanisms use
XPath, and XPath is quite limited when it comes to "understanding"
types. I even wrote a (now expired) draft with a proposed solution:
https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-bjorklund-netmod-yang-xpath-extensions-00
I can see how it is challenging with XPath but it seems equally as
challenging with a combined leaf as with split leaves.
I think you were trying to argue for how it is beneficial to have split
leaves, one for address and another for mask/prefix-length, as it makes
filtering easier. I don't think you've shown that.
For example, suppose I want to find all entries with a given
prefix; that is non-trivial with a combined ip-address-and-prefix
type.
This seems like a very weird example since it doesn't support your
case; it is not easier with two separate leaves!?
The alternative to using ip-address-and-prefix-length would be to use
two leaves; one for the address and the other for the subnet mask /
prefix-length.
combined:
ip-address-and-prefix-length: 1.2.3.4/24
split:
address: 1.2.3.4
prefix-length: 24
Say we have another interface with address '1.2.3.5' (prefix-length 24
still). In what way is it easier to determine these are part of the
same IP prefix / subnetwork by having the values split in two leaves?
As have been said before in this thread, it is not an address and a
prefix length, it is an address and a prefix.
There are multiple opinions on what "it is" in this thread.
authoritatively restating your opinion does not help. Juergen called
this "what goes in" vs "the meaning".
Perhaps easier to agree on, is the information that is contained, which
is a superset of "what goes in" and "the meaning"
1.2.3.4/24
^^^^^^^ ----- address
^^ -- prefix-length
^^^^^ + ^^ -- prefix
24 is a prefix-length and it is in there. I'm fine with anyone claiming
that there is "prefix information" contained within 1.2.3.4/24, just as
there is an address and a prefix-length in there but I think claiming,
as you did, that there is no prefix-length in there is patently false.
The representation of a prefix includes a prefix-length so I think your
statement is incorrect as it contradicts itself.
Since you are adamant about the definition I suppose you had no part in
the creation of tailf:ipv4-address-and-prefix-length or it would have
been called ipv4-address-and-prefix!? Or maybe it wouldn't have existed
at all.
So the split model
would have a leaf "ip-prefix: 1.2.3.0/24", which can be compared.
No, it would not. The split model is what is in RFC7277/8344, which you
wrote, and there is no ip-prefix in that model so I don't know why you
would say that the split model would have it.
There is no text operation that can easily do this for us - we need to
parse the values with some class / type in our programming language
that helps us make this comparison so in what way is
ip-address-and-prefix-length worse?
Let us look at some examples how this is typically done. Again,
postgresql has the 'inet' type. From the docs:
"The input format for this type is address/y where address is an IPv4
or IPv6 address and y is the number of bits in the netmask. If the /y
portion is missing, the netmask is 32 for IPv4 and 128 for IPv6, so
the value represents just a single host. On display, the /y portion is
suppressed if the netmask specifies a single host."
It wants it combined, which means the two leaves need to be formatted
into something that looks like 1.2.3.4/24.
Python ipaddress.IPv4, from example:
interface = IPv4Interface('192.0.2.5/24')
Same thing. Rust ipaddress? Same thing. Go net? Same. Our internal
classes that compute IP addressing? Same thing. It seems most of the
datatypes that natively handle this kind of information takes a text
format like 1.2.3.4/24 as input (and not as separate fields), which is
what is being suggested we have a datatype for.
Is your point that there exist libraries that _can_ handle
"<addr>/<plen>", or are you suggesting that it is problematic to have
separate objects b/c libraries _only_ handle "<addr>/<plen>"?
Neither, really.
You suggested that a combined type is worse from a program perspective
and use a filter example to prove it.
I show how:
- filtering is equally non-trivial with two separate leaves (the leaf
you want to filter on doesn't exist)
- you need to use some ip address library to parse and filter with
- that probably rules out any XPath filter
- most such ip addressing libraries actually use the combined form and
not separate leaves, so if anything a slight convenience factor to the
combined form
kll
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