Keith Moore writes:
This was a choice - in some larger sense, if sourcing other-owned IP
addresses or TCP connections is considered an architectural problem,
needs to come down from above, rather than up from WREC.
sounds like a convenient excuse to me...
where did the wrec folks get the idea that the IP specification was obsolete?
Quoted from RFC791, the IP specification, in the section on loose
source routing, page 19 [emphasis added]:
If the address in destination address field has been reached and
the pointer is not greater than the length, the next address in
the source route replaces the address in the destination address
field, and the recorded route address REPLACES THE SOURCE
ADDRESS just used, and pointer is increased by four.
The recorded route address is the internet module's own internet
address as known in the environment into which this datagram is
being forwarded.
An end-to-end-inviolate source address is not a required part of the
IP spec.
The authors of the standard had the vision to foresee that rewriting
the source address might be desireable under some circumstances. They
were off target about when this might be used, but they designed a
protocol flexible enough to encompass things they could not foresee.
--
Dick St.Peters, stpeters(_at_)NetHeaven(_dot_)com
Gatekeeper, NetHeaven, Saratoga Springs, NY
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