John C Klensin wrote: > ... but I am unconvinced that we should make special > architectural provisions to make it easier to be in the ISP > business while being clueless.
Isn't that just what we did with MPLS?? ;) or does that just prove your point? ;)) My arguments are more about acknowledging the reality and requirements of the deployed architecture than they are about creating a special case. Routing filters do and will exist, ergo local scope addresses will exist. Applications will have to deal with that, yet there is no hint unless we provide a well-known flag. I agree that applications should not have to understand topology, but when they insist on passing around topology information they have bought into the need to understand what they are doing. DNS is one of the protocols that deals in topology information, so it needs to understand topology. We need to make it robust enough that applications can rely on it so they will simply pass around names. In writing that it occurs to me that one of our failings is that we have allowed a component of the system to have a very unrealistic (archaic) view of what the network is. The DNS system is designed for the network of 1985, and we blindly continue to use it as the database for locator information in a very different network. I understand the IAB has recently cleared its backlog of issues, so maybe this is a ripe topic for them to address ... Tony
