Re: [RAM] Ramblings about "locator"

Dear Brian;

On Jun 14, 2007, at 4:50 AM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:

> I was thinking about why we're having trouble being crisp about
> "locator".
>
> Maybe part of it is that in some contexts, as Noel hinted, a
> locator is loaded with topological significance. If the
> network topology in a given region is a strict binary
> hierarchy, then the locator may be very tightly mapped
> to the topology (and is in effect a route). But in other
> regions of the network where the topology is an arbitrary
> graph, the same locator has no mapping to topology and needs
> to be bound to a route by a routing protocol.
>
> Another thought is that on a classical broadcast Ethernet,
> an Ethernet address is a locator, but a rather strange one
> in that nobody except the receiver knows where the located
> interface is. But the same Ethernet address on a switched
> Ethernet or in a spanning tree becomes much more
> like a network-level locator; it's mapped to topology by
> the switching or bridging mechanism.
>

> Maybe the essential point is that a locator can at least in
> principle be mapped to topology and an identifier can't.
>

If in Ethernet what is essentially a random number (the MAC address)  
becomes
a locator then maybe the distinction will never be crisp.

Regards
Marshall

>    Brian
>
>
>
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