Re: sockets APIs extensions for Host Identity Protocol

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
>> One could conceive that such a level of indirection could be used
>> more generally outside of HIP, to enable applications to be more
>> compatible across IP versions, for instance.
>>     
>
> One important thing: this is only for the C programming language. In
> most (all?) other languages, programmers no longer handle directly IP
> addresses and thus are shielded from things like IPv4 vs. IPv6 or
> addresses vs. handles.
>   

In those cases, the programmers are also crippled and prevented from
dealing effectively with various cases that are now increasingly common
in the Intenet today: NATs,  multiple addresses for source and
destination (not all of which work equally well), IPv4 vs IPv6 (for
which the default address selection rules are woefully inadequate),
multi-faced DNS, LLMNR, etc.
> The big advice should be: use a high-level language (or, in C, a
> high-level library, like Neon - http://www.webdav.org/neon/ - or cURL
> - http://curl.haxx.se/) and you're safe from the changes in IETF
> fashions.
>   

only if you want to limit the deployability and/or efficiency of your
application.


Keith