On 2008-12-12 04:52, Scott Brim wrote: > RJ Atkinson allegedly wrote: >> So I think it is important to have very crisp definitions all around >> (forwarding vs bridging; identity vs location, et cetera) So I try >> to be consistent and precise with my use of terms. However, other >> folks' mileage differs on some/all of these issues, as is true with >> many other issues discussed in the Routing RG. I think we'd all be >> better off with some agreed upon crisp definitions for various terms, >> but past attempts to do that in this RG have not succeeded. > > Just to follow up on this part ... > > What you need crisp definitions for is how things are used, in protocols > acting on packets. Therefore you could ask > > "Is this field in the packet an identifier or is it a locator" > > but you've seen how get into discussion of whether something can be a > locator here but not there, and so on. It's more useful to ask > > "Is this field in the packet used for identification? Is it used by > forwarding?" > > You could answer "yes" and "yes" or "not in this scope".
Bingo! Whether a particular binary string has value as a locator or not depends entirely on the scope in which it's examined. If the flat lookup table in a bridge or switch decides which outbound interface to use on the basis of a MAC address, then it's being used as a locator at that particular point, even though it may have been used as an identifier during the ARP or ND process. Brian _______________________________________________ rrg mailing list [email protected] https://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/rrg
