Subject: RE: APIs for controlling source address selection

From: Richard Draves <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 22:19:09 -0800

> > > I have two possible designs for your consideration: A
> > > (simple) and B (more complex).
> > 
> > Either one is probably easy to implement and use.
> > 
> > I'm just wondering whether this type thing is the right 
> direction to go with
> > the API? It requires each application to include a user 
> controllable method
> > for choosing these settings.
> 
> "require" seems a bit strong here.  I don't think any applications is
> REQUIRED to use this interface.

That's right. In fact, I expect relatively few applications would use these
APIs, because I think the default behavior is right for most apps.

In general, I think users should not be be controlling the use of these
APIs. The application should know what makes sense. For example, if an
application knows that it is creating short-lived TCP connections and it can
survive the failure of a connection in case the host moves, then the
application might prefer care-of addresses over home addresses. But this is
something that the application knows, not the user.

Rich
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