a modest proposal

Curtis Villamizar curtis at ans.net
Mon Apr 18 16:01:41 UTC 1994


>       PROPOSAL FOR A NEW NAME/ADDRESS PARADIGM FOR THE INTERNET

This sort of idea has been proposed.  In essence, the NIC would inform
the customer that they don't own their address.  Efforts to do so by
individual providers have been legally challenged.

>    A complete Internet address is of the form <provider-part>.<customer-part>.
>    If the customer decides to obtain services from a different provider,
>    the customer shall adopt addresses using the <provider-part> of the
>    desired provider.  It shall be possible for a customer host to be
>    multi-homed to two addresses with different <provider-parts>, either
>    temporarily or permanently.

You don't need a second set of addresses to have a backup provider and
you don't want them.  If your primary provider loses connectivity to
you, the DNS mapping is still to the same set of numbers, it just gets
routed a different way.  A second set of numbers doesn't help.

>    name.  A server will respond with a Name-to-Address Reply (NARP)
>    packet containing the Internet address of that host.

Acronym overload: NARP is NBMA Address Resolution Protocol.  NBMA is
Non-Broadcast Multiple Access.

The mechanisms you describe for acquiring and disposing of address
mappings differ from DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol).  The
cutover can be executed by configuring the hosts with aliases (two
sets of addresses for their interfaces) changing the DNS mappings
while both addresses are available and then quitely removing the first
set of addresses.  (Except I don't think DHCP can do aliases).

Nice ideas.  Needs a few more margaritas.  ;-)

Curtis





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