On 9/26/02, Lloyd Wood wrote: >On Thu, 26 Sep 2002, Caitlin Bestler wrote: > >> >> So, as originally proposed an IP fragment is a fully >> self-routed L3 datagram. > >well, not self-routed; you need routing state. I don't >think the difference between routing table state and >circuit-switched state is all that great; anything beyond >hot-potato is fundamentally stateful. > Given the source interface, the *meaning* of an IP header is not supposed to be dependent on the routing tables. The routing tables merely implement that meaning. By contrast, the meaning of an ATM circuit is dependent on the context in which it was established. There is no expectation that there is any meaning to this circuit identifier beyond those imparted when the circuit was created. I would maintain that all the IP exceptions that leap to mind, such as NATs and load-balancing switches, do not actually violate this. The intended destination is merely a virtual host. In any event, regardless of similarities in execution, the difference in intended semantics is valid and fundamental. Caitlin Bestler http://asomi.com/CaitlinBestler/