On Oct 7, 2010, at 1:32 PM, David Conrad wrote:
Keith,
On Oct 7, 2010, at 4:32 AM, Keith Moore wrote:
As currently defined, IP assumes a global address space that is used
consistently throughout the network,
I actually think it's a bit worse than that. As currently defined, IP
assumes a global address space in which each individual address has the
potential for being topologically significant. Topological aggregation to
permit scaling was an afterthought that doesn't fit particularly well into
that architecture.
Fair enough. But very few applications out there make assumptions about
topology based on address assignments. If IP address assignment suddenly
became non topologically significant, hardly any applications would break.
Routing would have to change, but assuming you had a way to do it, such a
change would be far less disruptive than say IPv4->IPv6 transition.
Who is to say whose prejudices are right?
If it doesn't work (for some value of the variable 'work'), it's fairly clear
it's wrong.
From that point of view, everything in IPv4 is wrong. Using NATs is wrong
because it doesn't work for some apps; not using NATs is wrong because it
doesn't provide enough address space. In other words, the problem of making
IPv4 continue to be viable is (probably inherently) overconstrained.
Given people's reliance on the Internet, the idea that we can throw out the
existing (non-)architecture and replace it wholesale with something new is
mere fantasy. Even back with IPng was being chosen, the assumption that this
would be possible was probably a core mistake.
No disagreement there. Clearly you can't replace the internet architecture
wholesale, but it might be possible to evolve it. What doesn't work well is to
have everyone decide for himself how to change the architecture.
Keith
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