Ralph Droms wrote:
Fred - I'm not sure I have a strong argument against link local addresses, per se. I do observe that, as of today, we don't have a complete system for building an ad hoc network - of which LL addresses would be a part. That is, I don't see how the average Internet user can sit at a table in a bar with a couple of other folks and "do networking". We have a way for getting LL addresses, but as far as I know nothing better than "hey, what's your IP address" as a way to use applications to communicate on that network.
Well, I have seen certain "controlled arenas" in which a central authority can
provision, e.g., static host tables, unique MAC addresses, etc. among the nodes
they control such that local networking can take place even in random ad-hoc
encounters. Granted this only works for communications within the controlled
arena and may be an exceptional situation even then as it places an administrative
burden on the central authority that grows in complexity with the number of
nodes - but in some environments, the overhead may be acceptable.
Site-local addresses are more problematic - they cross more architectural/political/layer 8 boundaries. As you suggest, there are issues with address assignment and delegation, routing, provider independence, etc. I'm not sure we have a tight/complete set of requirements that are not met by global addresses to guide the design of some other form of addressing ... so I don't know that we can effectively discuss whether one solution or another is the right solution.
Well, whatever it takes to achieve such as set of requirements would be welcome;
it seems there may be more work remaining in the wg discussions so let's see if
we can continue to make progress.
Thanks - Fred [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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