[ih] History of Naming on The Internet - is it still relevant?

[touch at strayalpha.com]

> On Jul 21, 2025, at 8:46 AM, Patrik Fältström via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> On 21 Jul 2025, at 16:08, Andrew Sullivan via Internet-history wrote:
> 
>> So, to bring this remark back to something to do with history, _why_ did this perceived need arise?
> 
> I find the whole discussion about "naming" has to do with primarily two different questions which are mixed up:
> 
> - Identifier / location split (or mix)
> 
> - Who decides the lifetime of a “name"

Yu-Shun Wang, Venkata, and I developed a 5-dimensional approach back in 2006, originally for a Dagstuhl seminar on naming that we unfortunately were not able to end up participating in due to scheduling conflicts.

FWIW, it’s below.  The difference between ID and location is the semantics part and there’s the lifetime part (duration), but three others not yet mentioned: syntax, scope, and resolution.

The topic has definitely been grappled with, but unclear whether it’s evolved much practically.

Joe

——

The Five Sides of Naming
Joe Touch, Yu-Shun Wang, Venkata Pingali
USC/ISI
June, 2006
 
Names define an identifier (ID) space shared among the nodes in a distributed system. Most commonly, they are used as endpoint IDs and for determining a forwarding path between those endpoints. Many current debates focus on this endpoint ID / forwarding ID split, and between flat vs. structure names used for these two purposes. Our work on overlay networks and automatic network configuration has led our group to a more detailed view in which names have five distinct aspects: two conventional aspects of semantics (e.g., endpoint vs. forwarding) and syntax (flat vs. hierarchical), as well as three new aspects of scope, resolution, and duration. Semantics determines what a name means, other than merely as an ID, e.g., the difference between broadcast, unicast, multicast, and anycast IDs, as well as what a name indicates (endpoint vs. path). Syntax describes how other aspects of names are indicated in the structure of the name, e.g., the dots in a DNS name indicating scope, and the ‘class’ of an IP address indicating multicast vs. unicast. Scope describes the extent over which a name has meaning and how it is delegated, e.g., where www means something different in www.isi.edu vs. www.postel.org. Resolution describes how different name spaces are interrelated, e.g., using services such as the DNS, ARP, and BGP. Duration describes the persistence of names and their resolution, e.g., permanent in Ethernet to explicit expiry in the DNS. Until now, these five aspects have remained largely static, with emerging debates on name/locator split and name syntax recently exploring the dynamism of these two aspects. This discussion focuses on the dynamic nature of the three new aspects, in which protocol stacks can, on-the-fly, select subordinate layers (dynamic scope and resolution) and change the persistence of a name (dynamic duration).