Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > John Leslie wrote: > >Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> >>>It's a mutually interconnected address space. >> No, it isn't... > > I think we have to disagree on this. Fine. I promise not to use that term. (Actually, I'm nearing the point where I'll stop for a while to keep my Narten score under control.) >>>Just like any telephone connected to the PSTN. >> >> It's not remotely similar to a telephone connected to the PSTN. >> >> It's connected to a network connected to another network connected >> to yet another network (et cetera), none of which have any fixed >> contractual interconnections. Paths through the network of networks >> come and go (mostly) without any human intervention or even awareness. "Fixed contractual interconnections" was a bad way to say what I meant--namely that a packet is contractually guaranteed some priority if forwarded to a particular node named in the contract. My bad... > Have you actually looked at the internals of the PSTN, particularly > packetized underlying infrastructure, VoIP and all that? Any long > distance phone call, particularly an international one, gets packetized, > and goes through lots of different networks. ...under ToS "guaranteeing" certain behavior... > As to contractual relationships - what do you call backbone peering? Secret contracts -- which agree to exchange routes and accept some packets based on those routes. > The analogy is very direct. I think we'll disagree here, too. >>> I've certainly seen the term used interchangeably with IP address in >>> multiple contexts - mostly around DDoS attack on a particular "internet >>> endpoint" or another, and I seem to recall a draft MIB for "internet >>> endpoints" that essentially treated the term interchangeably with IP >>> addresses, >> >> Can you give an example? > > Google is your friend: > https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ops-endpoint-mib-00 > and no less than Doug Comer uses the term in his classic > "Internetworking w/ TCP/IP" > https://books.google.com/books?id=yhwfAQAAIAAJ&q=%22internet+endpoint%22+%22IP+address%22&dq=%22internet+endpoint%22+%22IP+address%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=OhgDVaarH4qlNoKggfAH&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAQ Unless I've missed something, Comer talks of "Internet endpoint address" rather than "Internet endpoint". (I do agree Comer is a satisfactory authority.) > (though he uses it in the context of a specific socket) A socket, in that context, _is_ a pair of addresses and other numbers which "define" the socket. >[snip] (May I suggest private email before we introduce any more new terms?) -- John Leslie <john@xxxxxxx>