* bmanning@vacation.karoshi.com (bmanning@vacation.karoshi.com) [Tue 09 Nov 2004, 13:54 CET]:
what would such an address be used for? a fixed IP address assigned at the factory has all the attributes of an ethernet MAC address. :) e.g. it "names" the interface at layer2.
It numbers it. But it's less useful than a traditional MAC address as it's not as generally usable after connecting the device to a compatible network.
i believe that an ip -ADDRESS- is an indication of -WHERE- in the topology a node currently sits, btu the address is not the name.
so are IPv6 numbers "addresses" or "names"? or some bastard combination foisted on the poor operations community who is left with trying to figure it out? :)
They're identifiers on the network layer. Names are what hu-mans give services, devices etc. They consist of two parts, a network part and a host part. The network part identifies the topology, the host part identifies the exact place in that topology. It seems we went back to pre-CIDR days with IPv6 and made everything a /64 (at least in 2001::/16). That makes it at least easier to tell the parts apart. -- Niels.