Re: [RRG] Consensus? End-user networks need their own portable address space

[jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)]

    > From: Scott Brim <swb@employees.org>

    > Given that so much of Internet traffic is going to be with mobile
    > endpoints, I don't see how can continue using the current "address" as
    > an identifier good enough to support session continuity. The only way I
    > can think of is to isolate applications from what's really going on
    > underneath, and present them with a token they can use for
    > identification and allow them to think it's a real address.

General agreement with all thatw, but I query the "I don't see how [we] can
continue" part. Look at what the phone system did, when faced with demands
for number portability (i.e. provider independence), etc. They still use
'phone numbers' in the existing externally-visible interface, but those are
now directory entry names, and get mapped into 'real' phone numbers away from
the sight of the users.

Which reminds me of another observation I had about IPv4 - it has the same
packet format for router-host and router-router interactions. Now, there's no
law of nature that says they have to be the same - it was done that way, back
when, for reasons of simplicity and economy of effort - but if there's a good
engineering reason to use differing ones, I don't see any fundamental reason
not to. We could keep the IPvN packet format as a service interface, and use
something else between the routers.

	Noel

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