On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 bdragon@gweep.net wrote:
If the goal were unique identification, MAC addresses would do just fine. No need for DNS.
MAC addresses are not without authority delegation. The IEEE is the ultimate authority in said case.
Yep... But have you seen any controversy about who gets which block of MAC addresses recently? They're not scarce, and every block is just as good as any other block.
Any solution which requires uniqueness also requires a singular ultimate authority.
Not really. You can just take random numbers. If you have enough bits (and a good RNG) the probability of collision would be less than probability of an asteroid wiping the life on Earth in the next year. There's no reason to use allocated MAC addresses, too; picking them randomly on power-up is actually better from the privacy point of view... however, a EEPROM and programming it at manufacture time seems to be about 1 cent less expensive than a built-in hardware RNG :) --vadim