On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 7:43 PM, Scott Brim <[email protected]> wrote: > William Herrin allegedly wrote on 04 04 2009 11:20 AM: >> Identifier: Any element in the ongoing communication between a user >> and a network service he uses which is statically bound to the >> function of correlating the communication's data packets with the >> communication as a whole. > > We use identifiers for > > - discovery > - authentication > - session control > - referral > > 3/4 of these are outside of an "ongoing communication".
Hi Scott, If you take the plain-english meanings of the two words (instead of implicitly adding "session" to the end) you'll find that it stretches to cover all four cases. If I chat with you today, and I chat with you tomorrow, and I chat with you again next week, that's an ongoing communication. I discover your current location, possibly by going somewhere I know you frequent, asking "Have you seen Scott?" and being referred to someone else who might know. We confirm each others' identity by sight and begin a chat session tied together by the audio characteristics of our respective voices. Nevertheless, I relent. "Identifier," as we've used it here on the group, has at least two rather distinct meanings that deserve to be treated separately. We do ourselves a disservice by trying to either combine them or exorcise one or the other. Referent - these are your discovery and referral elements. They're used in the process of connecting the user to the resource he seeks. Correlator - your session and authentication elements. They're used to collect the packets and connections and sessions into a larger scope. We've been calling both of these things identifiers but they don't really have much in common. Regards, Bill Herrin -- William D. Herrin ................ [email protected] [email protected] 3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/> Falls Church, VA 22042-3004 _______________________________________________ rrg mailing list [email protected] http://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/rrg
