A system doesn't have to provide mechanisms to look up mappings
from<any-name> to <any-other-name> to be useful;
agreed. but it does need to provide such mechanisms in order to
provide useful endpoint identifiers. without a mechanism to map the
endpoint identifier to an IP address, such identifiers are useless
in referrals between application components.
Correct, if you assume that there will be situations in which you only
have the endpoint identifier and you need the IP address. That's not
the only conceivable way of passing around a referal, it's just the
one that's closest to being a drop-in replacement for a referal
mechanism based on raw IP addresess.
well, we've had people saying that you shouldn't pass around the IP
address. obviously the new identifier doesn't help you avoid passing
around the IP address if you can't get the IP address from the
identifier.