58
submitted
6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)
by
jeffhykin@lemm.ee
to
c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Why doesn't every computer have 256 char domain name, along with a private key to prove it is the sole owner of the address?
Edits: For those technically inclined: Stuff like DHCP seems unnecessary if every device has a serial number based address that's known not to collide. It seems way more simple and faster than leasing dynamic addresses. On top of that with VOIP I can get phone calls even without cell service, even behind a NAT. Why is the network designed in such a way where that is possible, but I can't buy a static address that will persist across networks endpoint changes (e.g. laptop connecting to a new unconfigured wifi connection) such that I can initiate a connection to my laptop while it is behind a NAT.
- Yes, it would be a privacy nightmare, I want to know why it didnt turn out that way
- When I say phone number, I mean including area/country code
- AFAIK IP addresses (even static public ones) are not equivlent to phone numbers. I don't get a new phone number every time I connect to a new cell tower. Even if a static IP is assigned to a device, my understanding is that connecting the device to a new uncontrolled WiFi, especially a router with a NAT, will make it so that people who try to connect to the static IP will simply fail.
- No, MAC addresses are not equivalent phone numbers. 1. Phone numbers have one unique owner, MAC addresses can have many owners because they can be changed at any time to any thing on most laptops. 2. A message can't be sent directly to a MAC address in the same way as a phone number
- Yes, IMEI is unique, but my laptop doesn't have one and even if it did its not the same as an eSim or sim card. We can send a message to an activated Sim, we can't send a message to an IMEI or serial number
If I'm understanding correctly, you're saying that right now the network doesn't have an exhaustive table of IP addresses to physical locations. It has a cache, and a hierarchy, and the path to a location of the IP is fluid.
But a system where every device could be directly contacted/identified like a Sim card, would effectively require a complete table of "what network is device ABC at". A table that is updated every time the device changes network connections. It would be like trying to change domain name to point to a different IP address.
The problem is, updating a domain to point to a new IP takes hours or days not seconds, so doing that every time a phone changes WiFi is not practical.
Is that a good summary?
Yes, but we’re talking about “seconds” and “nanoseconds” rather than hours.
Networks move much faster than we do.
There’s also no hierarchy of IP addresses, and that matters for lookups.
So the 1 second it takes to do a dns lookup is WAY too long for continuous ip lookups, and the size of the database and chains requires explaining where to find ip address X is too long and updates WAY too much to be accurate and/or kept.
Lookups are easiest if you know “I lookup .uk addresses at this particular server in England” because that particular “ authoritative DNS server” only really handles its own little segment of lookups.
There is no such hierarchy in ip addresses, and they can’t really be cached for long.
You would have to continually know and update all of them. And we sorta do in the larger routers, but keeping that up to date at the edges would require a TON of bandwidth.