Re: sockets APIs extensions for Host Identity Protocol

[der Mouse <[e-mail]>]

>>> Second, the socket address structure is constrained to 255 bytes.
>> This limit borders on trivial to raise.
>> Well, unless you're trying to do this on an OS whose source is
>> closed to you, which I submit is a bad vehicle for such research for
>> exactly this kind of reason.
> Why is it "trivial" to raise?

Just change sa_len, sin_len, sin6_len, sun_len, etc, to short instead
of char.  (You may want to rearrange the element order for better
packing, but that's not essential, just helpful.)

> I think it will raise all sorts of backwards compatibility problems.

Only if you expect to recompile only part of the world.  There might be
code lurking that "knows" those fields max out at 255, but I'd say it's
already broken.

When (if) it comes to releasing OSes with the new _len fields, it gets
a little more interesting, but I'd just version the affected calls and
ignore the issue.

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