64-bit identifiers

[RJ Atkinson <rja@inet.org>]

At 08:20 09/08/01, Greg Maxwell wrote:
>I don't believe using the lower 64 bits to identify the host is the
>correct solution. 

The existence of the Privacy Address Configuration specification
for IPv6 means that the low-order 64-bits CAN NOT uniquely identify
a host.  Prior to then, using the low-order 64-bits (as proposed
by original 8+8/GSE) might have worked.  That approach cannot work
given the current state of specs.  Note well that the "privacy
extension" spec (sic) is being widely implemented and deployed in
end-systems (e.g. Windows XP).

Now one could postulate a different identifer that could be used
in things like Protocol Control Blocks to bind session state
and identity (in lieu of using IP addresses as at present).  There
would need to be some ability to map to/from that identifier to
other kinds of identifiers (perhaps IP Addresses, FQDNs) for 
this to be deployable, as near as I can tell.  There is some work
within the IRTF NSRG examining the possibility of adding such
identifiers to the Internet Architecture, but that's research
not engineering for now.

Ran
rja@inet.org