IPv4 address length technical design

Thu Oct 4 23:36:19 UTC 2012

In Singapore in June 2011 I gave a talk at HackerSpaceSG about just
doing away with IP addresses entirely, and DNS.

Why not just use host names directly as addresses? Bits is bits, FQDNs
are integers because, um, bits is bits. They're even structured so you
can route on the network portion etc.

Routers themselves could hash them into some more efficient form for
table management but that wouldn't be externally visible. I did
suggest a standard for such hashing just to help with debugging etc
but it'd only be a suggestion or perhaps common display format.

About the only obvious objection, other than vague handwaves about
compute efficiency, is it would potentially make packets a lot longer
in the worst case scenario, longer than common MTUs tho not much
longer unless we also allow a lengthening of host name max, 1024 right
now I believe? So 2K max for src/dest and whatever other overhead
payload you need, not unthinkable.

OTOH, it just does away with DNS entirely which is some sort of
savings.

There are obviously some more details required, this email is not a
replacement for a set of RFCs!

-- 
        -Barry Shein

The World              | bzs at TheWorld.com           | http://www.TheWorld.com
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD        | Dial-Up: US, PR, Canada
Software Tool & Die    | Public Access Internet     | SINCE 1989     *oo*