Re: [homenet] Introduction to draft-ietf-homenet-simple-naming

[Andrew Sullivan <[e-mail]>]

On Mon, Jun 18, 2018 at 06:32:26PM -0400, Michael Richardson wrote:
> Users need to be able to connect policies (including, but not just security
> policies) to both pretty names ("the office printer"),  and to stable
> identies.   Neither thing should have anything to do with IP addresses
> (which get renumbered), nor to MAC addresses (which may be more frequently
> randomized, even for things like printers).

I think this is right, but it seems to me we could be slightly more
formal.

Over time, a device has one of more MAC address; the MAC address must
not be treated as a stable identifier because it may change over time.

At a given time, a given MAC address may have 0 or more IP addresses
assigned.  If any MAC address has an IP address assigned to it, that
address is expected to be assigned automatically.  It is expected to
change.  An {IP, MAC} tuple should not be treated as a stable
identifier because both elements of the identifier may change over
time.

Each device will have at least one name.

Some names are automatically assigned through the workings of mDNS or
hybrid multicast DNS (or both).  In particular, when devices are
available by mDNS they are available by name, but the names are
checked (and if need be changed) algorithmically in order to prevent
duplication.  Names are unique within the scope of the homenet, and
devices will change their names in the event of collision.

Some names are generated by users, and assigned to devices, depnding
on whether the device supports that functionality.  These names MUST
NOT be changed algorithmically by devices, and MUST NOT collide with
automatically-generated names.  These names may be globally-unique, or
may be unique only in the scope of the homenet.


I _think_ that covers all the cases, but I might have missed
something.

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[e-mail]