Bits is bits.
A fixed length bit field and a variable length bit field are incredibly different beasts at the hardware level. Knowing exactly after how many bits you can make a routing or switching decision is ... pretty darned useful. Kevin Menzel Infrastructure Analyst Sheridan College -----Original Message----- From: NANOG <nanog-bounces@nanog.org> On Behalf Of bzs@theworld.com Sent: Wednesday, October 9, 2019 5:43 PM To: John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> Cc: nanog@nanog.org; bzs@theworld.com Subject: Re: worse than IPv6 Pain Experiment OK OK OK. Can I summarize the current round of objections to my admittedly off-beat proposal (use basically URLs rather than IP addresses in IP packet src/dest) as: We can't do that! It would require changing something! I've no doubt many here are comfortable with the current architecture. Bits is bits. URLs are, to a machine, just bit strings though they do incorporate a hierarchical structure which isn't that dissimilar from current network/host parts of IP addresses. URLs are an obvious candidate to consider because they're in use, seem to basically work to identify routing endpoints, and are far from a random, out of thin air, choice. Given the vast improvements in hardware since we last seriously thought about this (ca. 1990, IPv6) perhaps this worship of bit-twiddling and bit-packing may be a bit (haha) like those who once objected to anything but machine language programming because HLLs were so inefficient! P.S. It was from a talk I gave in Singapore to the local HackerSpace and intended to provoke thought and discussion but not just "no, we can't do that because that's not the way we do things." -- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: +1 617-STD-WRLD | 800-THE-WRLD The World: Since 1989 | A Public Information Utility | *oo*