[AFS3-std] Re: Encoding IPvN addresses

[Andrew Deason]

On Tue, 8 Feb 2011 17:29:32 -0600
Andrew Deason <adeason@sinenomine.net> wrote:

> On Mon, 07 Feb 2011 19:41:45 -0500
> Jason Edgecombe <jason@rampaginggeek.com> wrote:
> 
> > Is there a plausible case where multiple IPv4, IPv6 or a mixture of
> > addresses would need to be packed into this single field? I'm just
> > wondering if we need to deal with multicast/anycast/foocast or dual
> > IPv4/IPv6 layers.
> > 
> > I'm guessing that these cases would be a list or array of the field
> > under discussion, but I wanted to ask the naive question.
> 
> I think it's handled fine by the layer above, by having an array of
> addresses.

Actually, this made me realize, if you do encode multiple addresses in
one address structure, you can make this more efficient for larger
numbers of a addresses. That is, instead of having one IP address per
structure, if you just have multiple addresses in the e.g. IPv4 opaque,
you don't need to repeat the "IPv4 address type" int every time. That
would almost always save some space, since we'd almost always be dealing
with lists of addresses of the same type (or two types).

I don't know if it's worth it or anything, but just a thought.

-- 
Andrew Deason
adeason@sinenomine.net