Re: [RRG] Long term clean-slate only for the RRG?

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

    > From: Dino Farinacci <dino@cisco.com>

    > the mapping database is something that has to scale on a grander scale
    > that what we've seen with other mapping or caching databases.

This triggered the following thought, something for people to think about:

If one signs on to the concept of 'separate location from identity', and one
also decides to support a high percentage of unmodified hosts, then that more
or less inevitably implies a network-sized (i.e. distributed) mapping database
(along with its attendent maintainence/deployment/etc costs).

That's part of the reason I was at one point enamoured of adding identity
above the internetwork layer: I worked out a TCP option that would make TCP
connections be between endpoints, and the address-endpoint mapping was
contained in the connection request - no need for a distributed mapping
database. However, it did require changing the hosts...

But if one thinks about it, it kind of makes sense that those two together
imply the need for the mapping database. I mean, if the hosts can't be
involved in providing bindings (because they don't change), and there's going
to be a new namespace, how else can one create and promulgate the bindings
involved in that new namespace, if not in a separate system?

So I can't see anyway around the location-identity-separation +
unmodified-hosts --> network-sized-mapping-database problem. Or is my brain
just not working very well today, and there's some clever solution I have
missed?

If not, people need to seriously re-examine their commitment to the principle
of separate of location and identity. Like multi-homing, it has benefits, but
it also has inevitable costs. TANSTAAFL...

	Noel

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