Keith Moore writes:
| yeah, I really wish those who are trying to improve network routing
| (an endeavor which I respect in principle) would consider that
| applications really do need stable endpoint identifiers which
| are globally scoped, exchangable with other applications, and
| reliably usable from anywhere to reach the process listening
| to that endpoint.
Understood, and that was probably never a non-goal.
The problem about overloading topology and identity is that it's hard
to think about separating the overloaded meanings from one another.
Worrying that breakage can happen is perfectly understandable from both the
perspective of someone needing to work with the "where" (topology locator)
and someone needing to work with the "who" (identity name), since
in a large, complicated network, the overloading really can be
a zero-sum game. A proper separation (or initial non-overloaded design),
however, can satisfy both namespace needs.
Incidentally, the IRTF's NSRG (http://www.irtf.org/charters/namespace.html)
exists to study this problem, and there are a number of interesting ideas
being developed there that will meet your wishes expressed above.
Sean.
