> On October 8, 2019 at 12:04
bill@herrin.us (William Herrin) wrote:
> > On Tue, Oct 8, 2019 at 12:01 PM <
bzs@theworld.com> wrote:
> > My main point is, as I said, Bits is Bits, whether they're human
> > readable (for some value of "human") like URLs or long hex strings
> > which perhaps are less human readable.
> >
> > Bits aren't just bits. Bits with useful properties (such as aggregability which
> > coincides with the routing structure) are better bits.
>
> Yet somehow we manage to start with URLs (for example.)
URLs have lots of useful properties. None of them facilitate network routing but they facilitate lots of other useful stuff.
> My point is whatever is used it can be mapped to something perhaps
> more efficient given some design goals, such as the DNS does. And for
> that matter route lookup tables w/in routers.
Mapped by who? The genius of the Internet's design lies in its answer to that question: the end to end principle. The end to end principle says that the endpoints (not middleboxes) should resolve those mappings so that the middleboxes need not manage abstractions.
Packet switching is just fancy statistical multiplexing of a circuit-switched network... until you remove stateful management of the connections from the data path and keep it on the endpoints. Then it's more.
Regards,
Bill Herrin