Systems Approach4d ago

As we continue to make progress on the next edition of our textbook, we have been working on a chapter about naming. While our earlier editions had some coverage of DNS, we've realised that naming has such a pivotal role in networking—not to mention computer science more broadly—that it deserves a more thorough treatment. There is perhaps no better place to start a discussion on naming than the discussion between Alice and the White Knight on this very topic in "Through the Looking Glass" (we are not the first people to make this connection). So that's what we did in this week's newsletter:
https://systemsapproach.org/2026/05/18/sound-advice-from-the-white-knight/

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Sound Advice from the White Knight - Systems Approach

A name identifies what object we want to access; an address identifies where the object is located. But there are subtleties to naming

Systems Approach
Show threadSystems Approach4d ago

White Knight: "The name of the song is called ‘Haddocks’ Eyes.’”

“Oh, that’s the name of the song, is it?” Alice said, trying to feel interested.

“No, you don’t understand,” the Knight said, looking a little vexed. “That’s what the name is called. The name really is ‘The Aged Aged Man.’”

“Then I ought to have said ‘That’s what the song is called’?” Alice corrected herself.

“No, you oughtn’t: that’s quite another thing! The song is called ‘Ways and Means’: but that’s only what it’s called, you know!”

“Well, what is the song, then?” said Alice, who was by this time completely bewildered.

“I was coming to that,” the Knight said. “The song really is ‘A-sitting On A Gate’"

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Show threadSystems Approach4d ago

There are two seminal papers on naming from the early days of the Internet (the first of which led us to the White Knight and Alice):
John Shoch’s classic 1978 Inter-Network Naming, Addressing, and Routing paper, makes the following distinctions:

- a name identifies what object we want to access,
- an address identifies where the object is located, and
- a route identifies how to reach (connect to) the object.

https://www.rfc-editor.org/ien/ien19.txt

Jerry Saltzer pointed out the limits of this taxonomy in a 1982 paper republished as RFC 1498

https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1498.txt

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Show threadTobin Baker
@SystemsAppr Saltzer also coauthored a whole textbook chapter on naming in POCSD
May 19 at 11:14pmWeb