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Re: [RRG] On identifiers, was: Re: Does every host need a FQDN



On 15 aug 2008, at 23:08, Christian Vogt wrote:

We need to be realistic and recognize that fixing the API isn't going
to do anything to solve the current routing scalability problem.

you are right that the RRG is, in fact, looking at two problems:

- the routing scalability problem

- the convolution between locators and identifiers in host stacks

But: You are arguing that (1) solving the second isn't worthwhile (2)
because it would fail to help solving the first.

No, I was saying that because 2 doesn't solve 1, 1 can't be used as a sufficient argument for doing 2.

Regarding (1):  Improving the API would have the following benefits:

- easier application programming
- clean separation of identifiers and locators, hence simpler mobility
 and multi-homing support
- easier NAT traversal
- less complex network renumbering because applications are unaffected

Right. (Well this depends on what the API looks like, of course.)

I'm thinking that if we want to make such an API so abstract that it doesn't care about mundane details such as the transport protocol or NAT, we probably need significant additional logic that does discovery and resolving, probably to the degree that we need additional protocol logic, for instance to discover whether a remote service is reachable over TCP vs SCTP or UDP vs DCCP.

I think this is worthwhile work, but my question remains: should we take this on in RRG?

Regarding (2):  A new API may be a building block in a new routing
architecture.  Since a new API would make renumbering easier as noted
above, it may facilitate the wide class of routing scalability
solutions that require edge network renumbering on provider changes.

Well, IPv6 solves the address depletion problem and yet the availability of an IPv6 API hasn't helped us much here, so far at least.

But I guess we can come up with a compatibility layer at some point.

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