Christian, There is one more primary need for identification on the general network. That is the necessity of node identification. A node has to have identifier in order to be distinguished from other nodes. Node identification provides for efficient handling of node multihoming, possibly dynamic, and for stable mapping of human readable names. One basic use of node identification is connection identification, which includes node identification. A complement to that use is the presence of node identification in connection initiation. Node identification descends from the domain name system and is currently woven into unicast addressing. Extracting it from both is the evolution.
Toni Christian Vogt wrote: > Dear all - > > I am catching up on folks' previous discussion on identifier properties. > This discussion is really useful; I wish I had participated earlier. > > One thought that has been brought up is the inevitable coexistence of > multiple types of identifiers. This makes sense given the variety of > things to be identified. In fact, the multitudinousness of identifiers > is not new: Many applications have their own identifiers already today. > > But are all these identifier types essential elements of an Internet > architecture? I would argue most of them are not -- they are useful > within the scope of a particular Internet application, but they are not > essential for the Internet per se to function. In fact, I see only two > purposes for which the Internet architecture must have identifiers: > > (1) service identification, identifying a piece of communication > software that responds to incoming contact establishment attempts > > (2) session identification, identifying the protocol state corresponding > to a particular session after contact establishment > > Individual Internet architecture solutions may use combinations of more > than one identifier for either of these two purposes. For example, > service identification in the existing Internet is achieved by combining > a host identifier (DNS name, or IP address in its role as a host > identifier) and a host-local service identifier (well-known port > number). So an Internet architecture may have more than two types of > identifiers. But again, it seems that all of those identifiers would > serve only the above two purposes, after all. > > Given the distinct identifier purposes, the properties of identifiers > may naturally be specific to a particular purpose. For example, the > property of enabling session referrals clearly applies to only session > identification, but not to service identification. On the other hand, > stability is a property that is more important for service > identification than for session identification, since two hosts engaged > in a session may be able to handle changes of session identifiers. > > Thoughts? > > - Christian > > > > _______________________________________________ > rrg mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/rrg > _______________________________________________ rrg mailing list [email protected] http://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/rrg
