On Nov 25, 2007, at 12:24 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
I really wish it could be like that, but I think all the history, including pre-CIDR days and the modern PI heresy, shows that we simply aren't going to achieve congruence between topology and address structure. So yes, I guess I'm arguing that *if* we want a defined hierarchy, it has to be orthogonal to address structure (which is why I suggest borrowing some AFI bits to represent the hierarchy in the maps).
Well, I think it's pretty clear that congruence isn't entirely possible. If nothing else, addressing naturally forms a hierarchy, whereas topology is an arbitrary graph. Perhaps I'm putting more into 'congruence' than you really meant.
Yes, clearly we need hierarchy so that we have abstraction. Yes, we would clearly like to have things defined, as the alternative is worse. ;-) However, it's not at all clear to me that borrowing bits from the AFI really changes anything conceptually. It's basically just more bits that could have been part of the address prior.
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