Subject: Re: [alto] alto Digest, Vol 32, Issue 15

From: Bill Roome <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2011 12:09:27 -0400

>On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 9:32 AM, Zhang, Ning <[email-masked]>
>wrote:
>>Hi, Rich,
>>
>>Here is another comment regarding to the IP addresses in an endpoint
>>cost lookup response, specified in Section 7.7.5.1.5.
>>
>>It would be better to make it clear that each IP address in the response
>>must be encoded in the same format as specified in the incoming request.
>>
>>For example, if "ipv6:FF00::192.1.1.1" is specified in the request, the
>>server should use the same one in the response, instead of other
>>equivalent formats, such as "ipv6:FF00::C001:0101".
>>
>
>I'm not convinced there needs to be such a requirement - can you say
>why this should be?  For example, in implementation I would imagine
>parsing the addresses in the request into the raw bytes ....

Rich,

That's the confusion. You're thinking as a server implementor. Yes, an
ALTO server has to parse addresses into raw bytes, and index on those.

But an ALTO client doesn't. A client can get a set of addresses, as
strings, pass them to the ALTO server, as strings, pick the one with the
least cost, as strings. The client doesn't have to parse the addresses
into raw bytes until (and unless) it actually decides to talk to one of
those addresses.

If then! Often the client will just pass the IP address as a string to
some lower level function, and only then is it finally parsed into raw
bytes.

	- Bill Roome