Naming and Addressing of Objects Without Unique Identifiers

This paper proposes the hierarchical naming scheme, which is a way of naming and addressing suitable for large-scale distributed systems. FIrst, assumptions of the systems are provided, and features required for naming in the systems are discussed. Then, the methods for giving location-independent IDs and addresses representing objects' location are proposed. Our scheme constructs global IDs and addresses from locally unique ones. They have relative representations, which are translated if they are transmitted among naming contexts. This ensures uniqueness of IDs while e ciency and availability are preserved. Next the paper introduces methods which make our scheme suitable for mobile naming contexts and dynamic recon guration of networks and systems. Implementation issues of our method and their solutions are also presented.