Why doesn’t every computer have a hardware based static ipv32 address, along with a private key to prove it is the sole owner of the address?
Why doesn’t every computer have a hardware based static ipv32 address, along with a private key to prove it is the sole owner of the address?
They do, it’s called an IP address.
Phones get numbers assigned to them by a cell service provider, in order to communicate on their network, which is basically the exact process for computers and IP addresses.
If you’re asking about the equivalent of like a SIM card, in the computer/internet world, that’s handled at higher layers, by digital certificates. And again, the process is almost exactly the same, except they don’t (usually) get put on physical chips.
Cell phones don’t get a new number every time they switch cell towers, so why do laptops.
Its not like I can write down the IP address of my friends laptop so I can send it a message once he gets to a new city.
With static IPs that’s possible, but you already do that when you email them already.
Laptops don’t get a new IP address every time they switch from one AP to another in the same network either. Your cell phone will get a new IP address if it switches to a different cell network.
I can get VOIP calls behind a NAT without cell service. I’m asking how is that possible. Is the router somehow part of the same AP as cell service?
Whoa, that’s a sizeable edit to the post! Regardless the answer is pretty straightforward: your VOIP client (either the device if you have one or the software) is connected to a VOIP service which acts like a gateway for your client. Since the client initiated the connection to the gateway and is keeping it alive, you don’t need to make any network changes. Once the connection is established, standard SIP call flows (you can Google that for flow diagrams) are followed.
So no, you router is not part of the cell service. The VOIP provider is part of a phone service that receives calls and routes them for you, just like the cell towers are part of a telephony provider that routes calls through the appropriate tower.
Finally :D thank you so much!
So basically VOIP is “cheating” because its not actually handled by the network directly, the phone company pays for always-online servers, and phone(s) reach out to those server every time they change networks, in order for servers to be able to route calls to them.
Which also means! it is possible to do the same thing for computers, but it requires having
Which also explains why general network providers wouldn’t want to create the infrastructure. Even if universal addresses were given to each device, which simplifies DHCP and address-leasing, and shortens time it takes to handshake with the network, all of that is less of a cost than the infrastructure needed track of devices as they change networks. (And that’s on top of ISP’s being slow to change from the legacy approach of local networks and desktops).
^ which is more the conversation I wanted to have but didnt really get with this post.
Yeah 😅 I didnt want it to be this complicated of a question, but I didnt see how else to explain that current addressing systems don’t meet the same need as a phone number.
There’s other reasons why universal addressing is not done - privacy, network segmentation, resiliency, security, etc. And while IPv6 proponents do like to claim that local networks wouldn’t be strictly necessary (which is technically true), local networks will still be wanted by many. Tying this back to phone numbers - phone numbers work because there’s an implicit trust in the telcos, and conversely there’s built in central control. It also helps that it’s only a very domain specific implementation - phone communication specifications don’t change very often. On computer networks, a lot of work has been done to reduce the reliance on a central trust authority. Nowadays, DNS and SSL registries are pretty much the last bastion of such an authority, with a lot of research and work having gone into being able to safely communicate through untrusted layers: GPG, TOR, IPFS, TLS, etc.
IP address is really the best comparison here. Some computers share an IP just like entire call centers may share the same phone number. And neither IP addresses and packets nor phone numbers are properly authenticated without additional enforcement systems.
Internal networks exist for computers and phones. It’s a nice parallel.
No, computers can’t share IPs
They can share the same router and therefore have the same public IP.
Yes, but no. The public IP is that of the router, which NATs packets to each host, each of which must have a unique private IP. The public IP does not reference or identity hosts behind the router.
A phone number does not uniquely identify a phone either.
Sure they can. If you put a network behind a router they will share an egress/ingress IP. And there are certain high availability setups where computers share IPs in the same subnet for hot/standby failover.
Yes, but no. The public IP is that of the router, which NATs packets to each host, each of which must have a unique private IP. The public IP does not reference or identity hosts behind the router. And that’s not how HA works. Only one host is assigned the active IP at one time.
When you do call routing with a PBX each phone has an unique extension, equivalent to the private IP of each host.
Oh, and there’s also anycast, which is literally multiple active devices sharing an IP.
You’d have to know more about BGP to know any cast doesn’t function as you think it does
Ah, I see we are resorting to ad hominem attacks now.
lol ok sally
So computers can share IP’s then right? By your example they are sharing their public IP. From the perspective of the server you are connecting to, all the machines on your LAN have the same IP. Same way multiple physical phones can be connected to a single landline, all those phones share the same number.
No, not the same
Except you can spoof an IP address or get another one from the ISP just by asking. You can spoof a MAC address too.
Intel introduced unique processor id’s back in the late 90s.
Phone numbers can be spoofed, and SIM cards can be cloned. The analogy stands.