Re: identity persistence and comparison issues

[Erik Nordmark <Erik.Nordmark@sun.com>]

> Now, the initiator may not need to have such a stable identifier, since 
> the initiator does not receive communications. what the initiator needs 
> is an identifier that is stable during the communication lifetime so, 
> if the locator change, the identifier is maintained so it is the 
> communication.

I agree in principle, but I'm concerned this is a theoretical
observation because I don't think we can build systems that
know what the lifetime of the communication is.

It is true that in many cases "communication lifetime" = "TCP connection
lifetime", but if we build solutions assuming this then they will
fail for the cases when the equality doesn't hold; whether the
communication consists of UDP traffic, referrals, callbacks, or just
multiple TCP connections between the same nodes.

One could argue that the application should inform the "stack" about
the lifetime of the communication, perhaps by defining some new "open"
and "close" APIs, i.e. getting close to defining a session layer.
But my gut feel is that this requires more changes to the applications
than is warranted.

  Erik