> Bits is bits.
A fixed length bit field and a variable length bit field are incredibly
different beasts at the hardware level. Knowing exactly after how many bits you
can make a routing or switching decision is ... pretty darned useful.
Kevin Menzel
Infrastructure Analyst
Sheridan College
-----Original Message-----
From: NANOG <nanog-boun...@nanog.org> On Behalf Of b...@theworld.com
Sent: Wednesday, October 9, 2019 5:43 PM
To: John Levine <jo...@iecc.com>
Cc: nanog@nanog.org; b...@theworld.com
Subject: Re: worse than IPv6 Pain Experiment
OK OK OK.
Can I summarize the current round of objections to my admittedly off-beat
proposal (use basically URLs rather than IP addresses in IP packet src/dest) as:
We can't do that! It would require changing something!
I've no doubt many here are comfortable with the current architecture.
Bits is bits.
URLs are, to a machine, just bit strings though they do incorporate a
hierarchical structure which isn't that dissimilar from current network/host
parts of IP addresses.
URLs are an obvious candidate to consider because they're in use, seem to
basically work to identify routing endpoints, and are far from a random, out of
thin air, choice.
Given the vast improvements in hardware since we last seriously thought about
this (ca. 1990, IPv6) perhaps this worship of bit-twiddling and bit-packing may
be a bit (haha) like those who once objected to anything but machine language
programming because HLLs were so inefficient!
P.S. It was from a talk I gave in Singapore to the local HackerSpace and
intended to provoke thought and discussion but not just "no, we can't do that
because that's not the way we do things."
--
-Barry Shein
Software Tool & Die | b...@theworld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com
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