[Nsi-wg] NSI endpoint references

[Jeroen van der Ham]

On 10/03/2011 17:48, Evangelos Chaniotakis wrote:
> Jerry,
> 
> If I may distill your email to:
> 
> "Let's define an NSI-CS endpoint reference as this tuple: (globally  
> unique domain identifier, locally scoped opaque identifier)."
> 
> I'm fine with that definition.
> 
> The actual implementation/representation/format of such a tuple should  
> be left to the implementors of the protocol. It's just an ordered pair  
> of strings, it does not deserve a big discussion about formats.

GLIF has indeed adopted a simple scheme using a
"urn:ogf:network:<domain-name>:<local-part>" identifier. There are some
procedures setup to define who creates these things, et cetera.

You could argue that the urn:ogf:network part is superfluous, in the end
you just need a string that is a globally unique identifier for the
connection, or in this case the endpoints.

My case for using URNs is that they make it immediately clear what kind
of thing you are identifying. They signal to the reader what kind of
format the rest of the identifier is going to be, and the reader is also
pretty sure that the sender intended it to be like this too.

Also, when using URNs you avoid all kinds of nasty confusing things like
the allowed characters, encoding, syntax, comparison et cetera. Saying
that strings are just simple strings is hopelessly naive in this day and
age.

Note that NSI does not have to limit itself to urn:ogf:network, this is
a prefix that NML has requested in order to identify things. If the NSI
wants, it can make the case to get another urn:ogf:<something> prefix.

Jeroen.