In article <23963.65395.763065.591...@gargle.gargle.howl> you write: >So I proposed we dump numeric addresses entirely and use basically >URLs in IP packets and elsewhere. > >I really meant something like 'IP://www.TheWorld.com' in the >source/dest addr, possibly more specific for multiple interfaces but >whatevs. > >Leave out the implied 'IP://' and my example is 16 chars just like >IPv6. > >Routers could of course do what they like with those internally such >as maintain a hash table to speed look-ups. Not anyone outside of >router software developers' problem. ...
This is more or less equivalent to using device MAC addresses everywhere. I think that if you talk to people who build routers, you will find that they depend really heavily on the detail that every IP address has a network part and a host part, and they route using the network part. Ethernet switches send traffic to arbitrary MAC addresses, at the cost of remembering every MAC address they've seen, typically in a table with a few thousand entries. I know you've been on the net long enough to remember the good old days when there were only a few thousand URLs, but I fear it's unlikely we'll go back there. R's, John
