RE: A lowest layer with location independent identifiers with more than one protocols

[<john.loughney@nokia.com>]

Pekka,

> Firstly, it was determined that there seems to be some value of 
> providing
> 
>   "a lowest layer that supports location independent identifiers"

Could you explain a little bit more what you mean by this?  Lowest layer
of what & what value is there?  Do you mean a lowest layer 3.5?  
 
> In a way, that seems to be exactly what multi6 is trying to provide.
> 
> Secondly, some people expressed their discomfort with the HIP approach
> of combining identifiers and security.  Ion Stoica and Scott Shenker
> put it out nicely, saying that HIP provides
> 
>    A.  A mapping from a public key to an identifier, and
>    B.  A mapping from an identifier to a set of locators
> 
> Based on this observation, we came to an analogy.  Consider the case
> with current TCP and UDP.  They are on the same layer, and provide the
> same kind of *identifier* abstraction.  However, they provide different
> communication semantics.  In a way, one could perhaps characterise that
> "UDP is TCP without congestion control".  (I know, that is not quite 
> true, but I wish you get the point.)

I get this point, but you should at least add that different protocols 
use different transport protocols because these transport protocols
provide different services.  
 
> In the same way, there might be value to have more than one protocols
> at the "lowest layer that supports location independent identifiers".
> These multiple protocols would all provide the same kind of *identifier*
> abstraction, but different semantics.  One of the protocols might be
> HIP, with both A and B.  Another protocol might be something else, maybe
> with just B without A.  That might be what multi6 is aiming for.

This might be useful, but you should be mindful that HIP and Multi6, then,
could potentially provide different services to the protocols that run
on top of them.  The reasons for using HIP vs. Multi6, then, could be
based upon the services provided.

John