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Re: Identification

Iljitsch,

On Monday, March 17, 2003, at 12:48  AM, Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:

On Sun, 16 Mar 2003, David Conrad wrote:

To me, identifiers are values that uniquely and globally (at least
within the context of an internet) identify communication end points.

What makes a good identifier? Not something like an EUI64 identifier,
for the following reasons:

1. no usable hierarchy, hard to create a distributed database
No. An identifier can have hierarchy if desired. What is important is that the identifier hierarchy is independent of the location hierarchy.

2. when I replace my network card, I haven't changed my identity
Whether you've changed 'your' identity depends on what you are calling the endpoint of communication. If the endpoint is a toaster and the network connector dies, it is likely you'll be replacing the toaster, thus the identity has changed.

3. It would be extremely hard to make sure each EUI64 is only used once
   globally

See the comment above.


4. I could very well be using several network cards but it's still
   always "me"

See the comment above.


So we need to identify hosts rather than interfaces.
Using your argument above, what if I move to a different host? If identity is mapped to higher level constructs, I would want communications to move with me.

I feel FQDNs are the ideal identifiers.

Fine.


(But maybe I'm getting ahead of things.)

Yes.


 But we cannot hard code identifiers in silicon?

There is no _technical_ reason this couldn't be done.
Again, how are you going to look them up? Without some form of hierarchy
you need a centralized database. This is unworkable on a global scale.
One (not the only) obvious solution, using your ideal identifiers: play the ENUM game. If you have a EUI64 identifier, ASCII encode the nybbles and append a TLD, say eui64,arpa. This name could map into a set of locators.

Rgds,
-drc