Caitlin writes: > If a node only requires accessibility by a > few specialized nodes (such as a water meter) > then making it *visible* to more is just > creating a security hole that has to be plugged.
Only if the information made thus available itself constitutes a security breach, which is not necessarily the case. Knowing how much water someone consumes or how many cans of Coke remain in a distributing machine would probably not be a security issue for most users, just as answering a ping on the Internet today is not considered to be a security breach by most people (and those who do consider it so can block it). > My point remains, a globally meaningful address > is something that should only be applied when it > is useful for that endpoint to be globally addressable. Unfortunately, if no provision has been made for a global address in the first place, it may not be possible to put anything in place as quickly as required if the need arises, and for critical applications, this is not acceptable.