> From: Brian E Carpenter <[email protected]>
> I've said from day one that LISP's use of the term 'EID' is incorrect,
> and it should be replaced by something like 'local locator' or 'level 0
> locator' or some such.
Sorry, but it's _not_ a locator, and more an 'endpoint identifier' than
anything else - at least, as far as the original definitions of those terms
go.
(And might I remind people that the term "locator" came from Nimrod, and "EID"
from you-know-where. So excuse me if I get a little cranky with people trying
to tell me whether or not they are applicable to something, when I am
perfectly darned happy with their use in that context.)
The thing that people seem to be forgetting, in making this claim, is that
it's also important _what kind of thing_ is being named, not just _the
attributes of the name itself_. Those are two orthagonal axes, and people
still don't seem to be clearly understanding/remembering that most concept
terms being thrown around here, such as locator, EID, etc, generally involves
a _set_ of choices, one on each axis.
There seems to be a tendency to think 'locator' means 'name with topological
significance', and that's _not_ what it was defined as - it meant '_interface
name_ with topological significance'. (Actually, it was defined to be
'interface name with topological significance which does not appear in all
packets', since people seemed terminally unable to wrap their minds around the
concept of an 'address' that didn't appear in all packets.) Similarly, an
'EID' is an '_endpoint_ identifier without topological significance', not just
'name with no topological significance'.
We don't really have a generally-accepted term for 'endpoint name with
topological significance'; 'address' has some of that flavour, but in
e.g. IPv4 it also 'sort of' names an interface.
With all this in hand, it's clear that a LISP EID does _not_ name an
interface, but rather a 'stack' - i.e. an endpoint, with a collection of TCP
connections. So to say that it's a 'locator' is wholly incorrect - it is
_exactly_ an 'endpoint name', as that term was formally defined.
There is no one-word description/term which _exactly_ describes a LISP EID;
it's a bit of a kludge (precisely because of installed base issues). To be
maximally precise, a LISP 'EID' is 'a globally-unique endpoint name with
topological significance within a local scope only'.
Noel
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