RE: iSCSI Naming: WWUIs, URNs, and namespaces

["Thomas McSweeney" <rf42tpme@us.ibm.com>]

Sorry for using obsolete terminology, but I feel uncomfortable using
anything but the latest published spellings for the text keys on the Login
Command.  If there is an updated copy of the spec available (more recent
than the -05 version), I'll go find it and use the corrected terms from it
in the future.

I know what DNS names look like, but I do I did a little experimenting with
my machine's host name.  I discovered that it does have one despite the
fact that I use DHCP - whoever installed Windows2000 must have typed in the
machine's serial number as the name (and set it to automatically append the
DNS suffix).  I tried to delete the name, but Windows2000 wouldn't let me.
I also learned that our DNS does not resolve that hostname to an IP address
-  I can't ping my hostname from anywhere, except from itself.  Finally, I
changed it to match the hostname of another machine in my office which does
not use DHCP, and rebooted.  It came up OK and connected to the net just
fine.  I'm not advocating this, in fact I quickly changed my hostname again
to make it unique (I agree that all fully qualified hostnames should be
unique).

This solidifies in my mind the difference between the iSCSI resource's name
and its location.  I don't object to using the hostname as (part of) the
iSCSI name (perhaps qualified with a locally-unique identifier of a
specific iSCSI resource), as long as the spec does not require an initiator
to find its target's location by passing the hostname portion of the iSCSI
name to a DNS.  It would be OK for an implementation to do such a location
lookup, but it restricts functionality (e.g., if the target is temporarily
moved to another host without being renamed, the initiator won't be able to
find it).  I think this is consistent with what David Black said in his
append.

Tom McSweeney
iSCSI Development, Storage Systems Group, IBM
Email: rf42tpme@us.ibm.com
Phone: (USA) 919-254-5634  (tie line: 444-5634)
Fax:   (USA) 919-254-0391  (tie line: 444-0391)