Popping up a level (was Re: [RRG] On identifiers, was: Re: Does every host need a FQDN)

[David Conrad <drc@virtualized.org>]

On Aug 13, 2008, at 4:20 PM, Tony Li wrote:
> This seems a bit backwards.  Shouldn't the socket API in BSD have  
> been the
> correct abstraction that matched the semantics that we wanted our  
> various
> network namespaces to have?
I have long believed that the socket API was (and is) broken in that  
forces applications to know about addresses and even the semantics of  
addresses.  The fact that the socket API was _slightly_ changed for  
IPv6 sufficient to require modifications to every network-aware  
program but still kept this brokenness is (in retrospect) stunning,  
particularly when it would have been 'easy' to define a 32 bit  
"network handle" (like a file handle) that used 240/4 which would be  
an index into kernel managed addresses/names/pcbs/etc.  A hack, yes,  
but at least one that did not require modification to every network- 
aware program.
But we've got what we've got (or so I assume).

> Shouldn't we, as a research group, be looking past that to what a
> new socket API might also look like?
I suppose we could.

How many operating systems, languages, environments, etc. should we  
consider changing?
While I am being a bit facetious, this raises some higher level  
fundamental points that I'd like some clarity on:
Back at the Amsterdam workshop (2 years ago now), I had made the  
assumption that in the interests of stopping the bleeding quickly, we  
had to assume minimal changes to the deployed infrastructure.  With  
this assumption, the "jack up" (as Noel puts it) 16+16 model with a  
new network element (now called ITR/ETR) inserted at the "site" edge  
made the most sense to me since it required absolutely no change to  
existing network elements (from applications to hosts to core routers  
to even routing protocols).  The hard part would be figuring out how  
to do the mapping between the "inside 16" and the "outside 16" which I  
saw as mostly an engineering problem with a variety of equally viable  
solutions, each with their own tradeoffs.
However, various people have argued that the base assumption I made  
wasn't valid, that we had the time to "do it right" (although the  
definition of "right" and "wrong" have never to my knowledge been  
made) and revise any/all aspects of the existing infrastructure, that  
is, essentially write off IPv6 as a learning experience in what not to  
do and define IPv7.  Other folks have argued pretty much the entire  
spectrum in between.
Fundamentally, it would seem to me that there are some missing ground  
rules here.  Is anything fixed?  Should APIs be considered inviolate?   
Host network stacks?  Routers, core or edge?  Existing infrastructure  
models?  Business models?  I gather the official answer to all of  
these is "no", but is this actually realistic?
Also, what sort of timeframe are we considering?  While I tend to  
agree that the routing scalability sky is falling, it clearly hasn't  
fallen yet and I've heard wildly varying estimates of when we'll reach  
the event horizon.  Should we assume the output of this group needs to  
be deployed in 2 years? 5? 10? 50?
Thanks,
-drc


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