POSTEL@Usc-Isif.ARPA (05/21/84)
In my view the main difference between these systems can be found in the goals. The IFIP system is intended to be user friendly. I think that means the user gets lots of choices and the system will try to work with what ever the user enters. The IFIP system is discussed in the context of directory assistance. I think that this means the user gets to supply some facts about the person he is trying to reach and the system will search for the exact address. The ARPA system is intended to ease some administrative problems. It is not particularly "user friendly". It is assumed that the full correct exact name will be supplied and the appropriate information will be returned. (Except, that it may try to do name completion within limits, and with respect to a given context.) The ARPA system is discussed in terms of name to address translation. No generalized searching is required. It should be clear to anyone that what is a name and what is an address is not an issue. Just like programs and data, names and addresses depend on who is using them. You may think of some collection of statemens you wrote in Pascal as a program, but to the Pascal compiler it is just data. There may be an IFIP style directory assistance system where one enters a name (as a list of data-typed attributes) and gets back an address. It could be that in some cases the address returned is exactly the thing to enter into an ARPA style system (as a domain style name) to turn a host name into an ARPA-Internet address. I think the IFIP system is trying to solve a much harder problem than the ARPA system, and i think the IFIP system will be much harder and take much longer to implement than the ARPA system will. I believe that the IFIP system will provide a valuable service and i look forward to using it. I hope you will excuse me to do what i can to get the limited ARPA Domain Name system operating in the next few months. --jon. -------