Re: [[JDEV] Thoughts on user@server.com name addressing]

["Eric S.Smith" <csess@netscape.net>]

Oh, *ugh*.  Netscape's WebMail has a lousy interface for replies.
My apologies if this turns out all fouled up.

Thomas Jerome Muldowney wrote:

> There has been some discussion on here about the fact that jabber 
> uses the user@server.com style 

[snip]

> If the system was based off of a single name, or number, then 
> every time you sent a message it would have to be looked up 
> what server to send the info to in the distributed
> system.

Of course, this is how domain names work, so it's doable.

A central name-resolver wouldn't have to do too much work, since
communications would still be going through users' "home" Jabber
servers.  There could even be a community of name-resolvers that
shared the job (via round-robin DNS or a meta-resolver that just
tells you the name of a nearby name-resolver to use).

> Finally, wouldn't it be more of a client part to keep track 
> of what user@server.com goes with what Nick?

An address book, in other words?  This solves the problem of
remembering Jabber addresses, but not of giving them permanence:
one of the arguments in favour of centralized name resolution is
that if I move from one Jabber-enabled ISP to another, my address,
under the current user@host system, will probably change.

That said, I think that the user@host system is just fine.  If
it turns out to be too much of a hassle, we can just set up a
centralized name resolution system after the fact. People could 
then roll automagical use of it into a new version of the client.
The client would query the central system by handing it some 
universal Jabber ID code, be told the real user@host address, and 
make the call as before.  

This would be a backward-compatible extension to the client and 
wouldn't affect the installed base of older clients or the servers.  
As such, any concerned citizen could set it up -- expanding it to 
serve as a directory of other addresses too, if desired.

Another measure that would solve the problem of users changing
ISPs would be to give them the ability to leave a forwarding address.
Rather than just saying "no such user," the Jabber server could say
"moved to user@new-host."  Of course, this would require changes to
the protocol.

--Eric Smith

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