Re: [v6ops] Routers are hosts too!

["Jeff McAdams" <[e-mail]>]

On Fri, January 8, 2016 13:00, Alexandre Petrescu wrote:
> In that sense, I dont know what makes a Host be a Host and not a Router.


> What particular characteristic of Host is not a characteristic of a
> Router too?

So, I'm still not sure what you're trying to accomplish out of this
discussion, but ok....

I think you have it backwards.  At least in my mind and the working
definitions I've always used, a router is a device that forwards packets
between network interface using Layer 3 addressing information.  A device
that *doesn't* forward traffic would thus *just* be a host.

I've never worked up a good working definition in my mind to decide
whether routers are hosts or not...mostly because, in 20+ years of my
career, it has never been something I've had to even think about.  Thus my
questioning of what this whole discussion is really all about.  We're - in
my mind - well into the territory of angels dancing on the head of a pin,
much ado about nothing, and a huge heaping dose of bikeshedding.

If you find an example of a system that *doesn't* do longest match, then
let's talk about it.  (Yes, I saw the example of uIP, I would argue it
does do longest match as it chooses between localnet destinations and
0.0.0.0/0...it just has an *extremely* constrained routing table capacity
- 2 entries, and a very unusual internal representation of that routing
table)

-- 
Jeff