Hi, Here is a terminology straw poll for the Routing RG. As usual, I'm running this using Doodle. The poll lasts 1 week from the date/time of this email note.
Here is the poll URL: <http://www.doodle.com/dqfyfaigxuggs922> My thanks to Noel Chiappa, Dino Farinacci, & Joel Halpern (in alphabetical order) for providing corrections to earlier draft versions of these definitions. A few quick notes: ------------------- - As before, I can't edit the statements during the poll, because it obfuscates the meaning of votes that occurred before the edit occurred. - The "A" terms are pretty widely used today. - The B through E terms are not uncommon today, but are a bit newer than ancient terms like "bridge" or "router". A1) A "node" is either a host or a router. A2) A "router" is any device that forwards packets at the Network Layer (e.g. IPv4, IPv6) of the Internet Architecture. A3) A "host" is a device that can send/receive packets to/from the network, but does not forward packets. A4) A "bridge" is a device that forwards packets at the Link Layer (e.g. Ethernet) of the Internet Architecture. An Ethernet switch or Ethernet hub are examples of bridges. B) An "Address" is an object that combines aspects of identity with topological location. IPv4 and IPv6 addresses are current examples. C) A "Locator" is a structured topology-dependent name that is not used for node identification, and is not a path. Two related meanings are current, depending on the class of things being named: 1) The topology-dependent name of a node's interface. 2) The topology-dependent name of a single subnetwork OR topology-dependent name of a group of related subnetworks that share a single aggregate. An IP routing prefix is a current example of this last. D) An "Identifier" is a topology-independent name for a logical node. Depending upon instantiation, a "logical node" might be a single physical device, a cluster of devices acting as a single node, or a single virtual partition of a single physical device. An OSI End System Identifier (ESID) is an example of an identifier. A Fully-Qualified Domain Name that precisely names one logical node is another example. (Note well that not all FQDNs meet this definition.) E) Various other names (i.e. other than addresses, locators, or identifiers), each of which has the sole purpose of identifying a component of a logical system or physical device, might exist at various protocol layers in the Internet Architecture. EOF _______________________________________________ rrg mailing list rrg@irtf.org http://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/rrg