A modest proposal.

[Robert McQueen]

C. Scott Ananian wrote:
> On Feb 19, 2008 5:47 PM, Robert McQueen <robert.mcqueen at collabora.co.uk> wrote:
>> A similar, but more standards-compliant[1][2] proposal might look more like:
>>  xmpp:name.xxx at school.country.xs.laptop.org
> 
> The key part of my original proposal is that it also works in the
> (possibly temporary) absence of a school school or of network
> connectivity to the broader internet.  It can use DNS or mDNS if
> available, again without requiring connectivity to the broader
> internet or to the original schoolserver.

Indeed, but if you're able to make a mapping between the server-derived
identities and the link-local identities, this goal can still be served.
Currently we use the buddy key as this unifying key, but I very much
like the idea of providing extra information to open up the prospect of
communicating between schools, and allowing the XOs to exist in the
global XMPP namespace.

> Michael Stone suggested that the 'clever' part of the proposal, where
> the domain name is directly mapped to a link local IPv6 address, could
> actually be performed by a local DNS relay server on the XO.  So, an
> alternative might be something like:
>    xmpp:xmpp at name.xxx.school.country.xs.laptop.org
> It shouldn't be necessary to contact a server to collaborate directly
> with a peer.

Correct, but the problem here is that makes the addressing essentially
incompatible with re-using the existing (and globally-compatible)
namespace. In general, people don't run one XMPP server each. The odd
part seems to be that DNS must be involved. You don't need to mangle
things via DNS in order to allow a higher-level component to interpret
them and be able to make a mapping between identifiers (however they're
derived) and local IPv6 addresses.

>   --scott

Regards,
Rob