IPv4 address length technical design

[jra at baylink.com (Jay Ashworth)]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Barry Shein" <bzs at world.std.com>

> Don't change anything! That would...change things!

Your man; he is made of straw.  :-)

> Obviously my idea to use the host name directly as a src/dest address
> rather than convert it to an integer is not a small, incremental
> change. It's more in the realm of a speculative proposal.

Speculative is orthogonal to small or incremental; they are different measurement 
axes.

This is also true of the difference between addresses and names.  Addresses
are an engineering artifact; names are a business/administrative artifact.

*The entire point* of DNS vs IP is to uncouple those; necessary changes in 
the engineering artifact *MUST not* cause changes in the business artifact.

> But I'm not sure that arguing that our string of bits (e.g., ipv6) is
> inherently superior to your proposed string of bits (a host name) is
> an immediately compelling objection.

And, unsurprisingly, no one made an argument that trivial.  To the 
extent you think we did, I think we were merely giving you the benefit
of the doubt of already understanding this dichotomy, which is pretty
much Networking 201, and taken as read on NANOG.

Extraordinary changes require extraordinary justification.

> The objection which puzzles me the most is the implication that a
> numeric address locates a host or network directly or geographically
> rather than, as I understood it, by the tuple (address,route).

I didn't see anyone make that implication.  Could you quote?

> "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight
> you, then you win" -- Mahatma Gandhi

Yeah; that approach didn't work out well for Jim Fleming.  :-)

Seriously, Barry; my appraisal of this after three decades is that this 
is first year stuff, and you are not a first year guy, by any stretch.

So, is this just the epic troll of the year?  Or is there something
we're missing?

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                  Baylink                       jra at baylink.com
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