Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote: > On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 08:44:31AM -0800, > Hallam-Baker, Phillip <pbaker@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote > a message of 431 lines which said: > >> In fact it would be best for the O/S to provide an API which hides >> the details of the IP address from the application entirely in the >> same way that the ethernet MAC address is hidden. > > I agree and some people are working on it: > > Towards A Hostname-Oriented Network Protocol Stack for Flexible > Addressing in a Dynamic Internet > <http://users.piuha.net/chvogt/pub/2008/vogt-2008-hostname-oriented-stack.pdf> If by "hostname" the authors mean DNS names, then this approach is naive in the extreme. Granted it would be nice to have better application level endpoint identifiers than either IP addresses or DNS names, but you're not going to get a sufficiently fast, secure, and reliable mechanism for associating stable endpoint names with addresses without considerable engineering work. DNS is too slow and too often incorrect. And while it's true that IP addresses don't have the right semantics, neither do DNS names. Keith _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf