[Fwd: Kremen VS Arin Antitrust Lawsuit - Anyone have feedback?]

D'Arcy J.M. Cain darcy at druid.net
Wed Sep 13 16:17:59 UTC 2006


On Wed, 13 Sep 2006 17:53:04 +0200
Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer at nic.fr> wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 13, 2006 at 11:43:36AM -0400,
>  D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy at druid.net> wrote 
>  a message of 20 lines which said:
> 
> > No one knows me by my IP address.  They know me by my email
> > address(es).

Huh?  Are you trying to imply something?  If your email software
automatically adds that statement then please fix it.  It's insulting
when you trim the message to a shorter statement that you are
responding to.  The other 18 lines may not have been important to this
particular response but they were not content free.

> It does not seem true. IP addresses are visible outside in:
> 
> * DNS servers when you get a zone delegation (the most important
>   reason why changing IP addresses is a pain),

I reiterate, no one knows me by my IP address.  The software (DNS) they
use may and some people may need to make a change but the world in
general does not need to know that.  That's the whole point of DNS.

My point is that my friends and aquaintences may remember my number or
have it in their Rolodex but no one has to remember my IP address and
very few ever have to even deal with it at all and those that do,
only for a moment.

OK, my real point is that phone numbers are not like IP addresses.  You
may find a dark corner that exhibits some similarity but the basic
analogy is flawed.

> * some peer-to-peer networks like Freenet, which do not use the DNS.

I don't know enough about Freenet but I am willing to bet that users
don't need to remember IP addresses to get the benefits of it.

> (There are also a lof of internal uses of IP addresses for instance in
> firewalls and SSH caches.)

I never said that IP addresses were never used anywhere.  That would be
ridiculous.  They are entered into firewalls, routers, DNS servers and
such.  What I said was that users (remember them) don't have to
memorize or track them.

> So, you actually have:
> 
> 1) Phone numbers (very visible outside)
> 2) IP addresses (visible outside)
> 3) MAC addresses (completely invisible outside except for a few
>    minutes in the ARP caches)

Even number 3 does not leak out of the local area.  However, I fail to
see what conclusion you wish me to draw from this.  I don't know anyone
with any modicum of understanding of IP protocols that would dispute
these statements other than my nit about number 3.

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy at druid.net>         |  Democracy is three wolves
http://www.druid.net/darcy/                |  and a sheep voting on
+1 416 425 1212     (DoD#0082)    (eNTP)   |  what's for dinner.



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