Re: 64-bit identifiers

[Peter Tattam <peter@jazz-1.trumpet.com.au>]

I am not talking about identifiying hosts.  A host may have more than one
address per interface and be chosen arbitrarily.  I am merely referring to the
identity properties of the lower 128-N bits (where N is typically 64) for the
lifetime of a connection.

Peter

On Thu, 9 Aug 2001, RJ Atkinson wrote:

> 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
> 
> 
> 
> 

--
Peter R. Tattam                            peter@trumpet.com
Managing Director,    Trumpet Software International Pty Ltd
Hobart, Australia,  Ph. +61-3-6245-0220,  Fax +61-3-62450210