[157155] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: IPv4 address length technical design
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Siegel, David)
Mon Oct 8 14:59:03 2012
From: "Siegel, David" <Dave.Siegel@level3.com>
To: Barry Shein <bzs@world.std.com>, "nanog@nanog.org" <nanog@nanog.org>
Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2012 18:58:51 +0000
In-Reply-To: <20591.31343.30301.633043@world.std.com>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
I'll identify myself as the person who asked you the question privately.
Unfortunately, Barry, I still don't see a problem statement in your respons=
e. It sounds to me as though it really is nothing more than an interesting=
thought experiment, and there's nothing wrong with that at all as long as =
we all acknowledge the purpose of the discussion. :-)
Dave
-----Original Message-----
From: Barry Shein [mailto:bzs@world.std.com]=20
Sent: Friday, October 05, 2012 6:25 PM
To: nanog@nanog.org
Cc: Barry Shein
Subject: RE: IPv4 address length technical design
> While this is an interesting thought experiment, what problem are > you=
trying to solve with this proposal?
(asked privately but it seems worthwhile answering publicly, bcc'd, you can=
id yourself if you like.)
Look, as I said in the original message I was asked to speak to a group of =
young "hackers" at the HackerSpace in Singapore.
I wanted to be interesting and thought-provoking, make them think through h=
ow this stuff works for an hour or two, encourage them to poke holes in it,=
etc. It was one of the audience who pointed out the potential MTU problem.
What problem does it solve, potentially?
0. Despite fears expressed herein I am not single-handedly planning to conv=
ert the worldwide internet to this over the weekend. I'm going to need some=
help :-)
1. It eliminates the need for DNS in its generally used form.
Sure, we've overloaded DNS with other functions from SPF -- in fact it was =
Meng Weng Wong, inventor of SPF, who graciously invited me to speak -- to w=
hatever. But that's begging the point, there's nothing interesting here abo=
ut distributed, lightweight databases other than eliminating one. Keep the =
DNS protocol per se for those things if you like.
But given this you won't need to translate between host names and addresses=
which is really what DNS was invented to do.
2. It makes "addresses" more transparent to humans, particularly when you c=
onsider ipv6 addresses as typically displayed (hex.) Is this an important g=
oal? Not sure, but it's certainly true.
3. It's a transfinite space.
That just means that like Dewey Decimal etc it can be arbitrarily expanded,=
you can add more levels or even stick levels in between plus or minus some=
rules regarding SLDs/TLDs, and other rules which might or might not be imp=
osed (see #4).
But its total address space is as large as you allow a payload, there is no=
thing inherent in the scheme that limits the addressing other than the perm=
utation of all acceptable Unicode glyphs I guess. But since one can also ha=
ve numeric parts and the set of integers is infinite (that's tongue-in-chee=
k, somewhat.)
4. Also, because it's transfinite it's arbitrarily segmentable.
Again, that just means you can impose any meaning you like on any substring=
or set of substrings. So for example host.gTLD is generally taken to be so=
mething of some significance, or host.co.ccTLD, and that sort of idea can b=
e applied as needed, or not at all.
5. Bits is bits.
I don't know how to say that more clearly.
An ipv6 address is a string of 128 bits with some segmentation implications=
(net part, host part.)
A host name is a string of bits of varying length. But it's still just ones=
and zeros, an integer, however you want to read it.
The discussion I was responding to on NANOG involved how we got here and wh=
ere might we be going.
I brought up an idea I'd worked out somewhat and have even presented in a s=
mall but public forum as being a possible future to consider further.
Now you can go back to your regularly scheduled Jim Fleming guffawing.
--=20
-Barry Shein
The World | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.c=
om
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD | Dial-Up: US, PR, Cana=
da
Software Tool & Die | Public Access Internet | SINCE 1989 *oo*
