On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 7:18 PM, Dae Young KIM <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sat, Jun 12, 2010 at 3:11 AM, William Herrin <[email protected]> wrote: >> That's a great summary of how things were supposed to be. It's not >> such a great description of how things are. >> >> More generally, the address gets used in the following processes that >> have nothing to do with "where" the address is located: > > So, are you saying this semantic overloading of 'address' is the > reason to look for newer terms? Or, are you saying that such semantic > overloading is rather natural.
Hi DY, If was making any points, and I'm not entirely sure I was, it would probably be these: 1. Terms like "host," "address," and "router," already have common and well understood if not well defined meanings. While it might be valuable to better formalize those meanings this group, both singly and as a whole, lacks the prerogative to -change- those meanings. To the extent that Ran's definitions change those terms, the definitions are wrong. For example, any machine that speaks IP is a host. That includes routers. I'm not saying that should be the case, I'm saying that IS the case as the word is actually used. If we think it would be valuable to define a type of machine which originates and accepts IP packets but will never under any circumstances forward one elsewhere, we should pick a new word. 2. Redefining well understood and commonly used words in terms of poorly understood theoretical constructs is an exercise in getting other engineers to roll their eyes at you. An address is what it is, and that doesn't include anything about locators and identifiers. On the other hand, it might be valuable to define a locator (which is NOT a commonly understood term) as an address used only in a particular way or (if it's the group's preference) an address whose use includes particular functionality. Quite frankly, I think it would help the discussion to have two such terms - one for an address that is ONLY used in the next hop selection process and a different one for an address whose use INCLUDES the next hop selection process. Otherwise we'll keep interchangeably and ambiguously using the term locator to mean whichever one we happen to want to discuss. > I mean to say that 'semantic overloading' is not the real target > problem we had to escape from. Use of term 'address' was not the real > problem. Maybe, maybe not. But we don't have to settle that in language definitions; we need only define terms that allow us to precisely and constructively discuss it. 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
