On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 11:16 AM, R. David Murray <rdmurray@bitdance.com> wrote:
I think this hits the nail on the head. Rather than network engineers having a less precise understanding of IP, what we have is two different sets of domain requirements. Network engineers deal with networks, with IPs being a necessary special case. Others deal with host addresses, with networks as an additional data type.
It has been brought to my attention that my use of the word "imprecise" may have been construed as an insult. For that I apologize. That was not my intent. I am sure that your understanding of IP in your domain (network engineering) is as good or better than mine in my domain (UNIX administration). That is not the point I was arguing. Had you said that thinking of addresses as having netmasks is a useful mental model, I would have agreed with you wholeheartedly. To me, this is similar to thinking of voltage as pressure. Instead, you said (or at least implied) that addresses in fact do have netmasks, which I think is technically an imprecise way of describing how the technology works. To me, that would be like building a voltmeter calibrated in pascals. As another poster has commented, I think the name of the module is the source of some confusion. While I see the validity of your use case, that is not the use case I had in mind for a module named "ipaddr". In any case, I think with some enhanced documentation and maybe some class name changes, we can clarify ipaddr's API and strive to make it support both use cases. Your continued input will be invaluable as we move forward with the PEP. Clay