On Oct 6, 2010, at 8:57 PM, Fernando Gont wrote:
On 06/10/2010 05:40 p.m., Keith Moore wrote:
It's perfectly reasonable for applications to include IP
addresses and port numbers in their payloads, as this is the only
way that the Internet Architecture defines to allow applications
to make contact with particular processes at particular hosts.
Some might see this as a deficiency in the Internet Architecture,
but that's the best that we have to work with for now.
If anything, the fact that "this is is the only way that the
Internet Architecture defines..." doesn't make it reasonable.
So basically you're arguing to impair the ability of applications to
function, just so that network operators can futz around with
addresses.
No. I'm arguing that you should not blame NATs for broken application
designs, and that you should not assess reasonable-ness based on
existing (and questionable) application designs.
Reasonableness of an application should have to do with whether it's operating
within the expectations established by the standard IP, TCP, etc. protocol
specifications, not with whether it happens to conform to the expectations
established by any particular religion. As currently defined, IP assumes a
global address space that is used consistently throughout the network, and that
the network will make a best effort to deliver each packet to its destination.
The problem is that significant violations of fundamental design points of IP
are now so widespread and varied that there's no longer any objective view of
reasonableness. What you cite as "reasonable" is arbitrary. It isn't a
consequence of any explicit design of the protocol or the network, it just
reflects your personal prejudices. Who is to say whose prejudices are right?
What is desperately needed in the Internet today is an architecture. By
"architecture" I mean a set of explicit, conscious, well-considered decisions
that dictate the roles of various components of the network and how they
interact with one another. And that architecture has to be maintained to
reflect changing circumstances over time.
We don't have an architecture today. What we have today are the remnants of an
architecture that is 30+ years old, and a lot of competing religions.
Keith
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