Why don't computers have "computer-numbers" equivalent to phone numbers

Why doesn’t every computer have 256 char domain name, along with a private key to prove it is the sole owner of the address?

Edits: For those technically inclined: Stuff like DHCP seems unnecessary if every device has a serial number based address that’s known not to collide. It seems way more simple and faster than leasing dynamic addresses. On top of that with VOIP I can get phone calls even without cell service, even behind a NAT. Why is the network designed in such a way where that is possible, but I can’t buy a static address that will persist across networks endpoint changes (e.g. laptop connecting to a new unconfigured wifi connection) such that I can initiate a connection to my laptop while it is behind a NAT.

  • Yes, it would be a privacy nightmare, I want to know why it didnt turn out that way
  • When I say phone number, I mean including area/country code
  • AFAIK IP addresses (even static public ones) are not equivlent to phone numbers. I don’t get a new phone number every time I connect to a new cell tower. Even if a static IP is assigned to a device, my understanding is that connecting the device to a new uncontrolled WiFi, especially a router with a NAT, will make it so that people who try to connect to the static IP will simply fail.
  • No, MAC addresses are not equivalent phone numbers. 1. Phone numbers have one unique owner, MAC addresses can have many owners because they can be changed at any time to any thing on most laptops. 2. A message can’t be sent directly to a MAC address in the same way as a phone number
  • Yes, IMEI is unique, but my laptop doesn’t have one and even if it did its not the same as an eSim or sim card. We can send a message to an activated Sim, we can’t send a message to an IMEI or serial number
halcyoncmdr,
@halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world avatar

Phone numbers aren’t exactly unique. It’s really not much different than being assigned a static IP address from your ISP. They’re assigned and if a line is cancelled or you change your number, it goes to a dormant state for a while then is reassigned to someone else.

Your phone’s IMEI on the other hand is a unique number, similar to a MAC address for network devices. Unlike a MAC though, it is illegal to spoof or clone an IMEI. Infrastructure however wasn’t designed to use the IMEI or MAC as the publicly accessible address, it was designed with a middle translation layer in mind.

Not 100% sure, my early history is lacking a bit, but I think that was simply because the fundamental network design underlying everything we use predates unique identifiers like MAC addresses existing.

jeffhykin,

Solid answer, thanks! You deserve all the upvotes that were, instead, for some reason, given to the guy that just said “I think its a MAC address”

apfelwoiSchoppen,
@apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world avatar

IMEI numbers for phones are more unique than phone numbers.

BearOfaTime,

Every land-line phone I’ve had didn’t carry it’s number with it. The number is assigned to a fixed, immovable address. Back then it was part of a physical switching system - in the switching center, shafts would move up and down and rotate to connect one circuit to another. These were circuit-switched networks. (These were eventually replaced by digital switches).

The only number that’s static on my cell phone is the EID, because it’s necessary with a mobile device connecting to a radio-based network. The system needs to know how to route a connection whenever the phone moves - “which tower is it on” - which is handled by the device registering with the tower, the network then updates it’s database. The phone number with a cell phone is specifically for routing user connections (essentially tells the system what subscriber is associated with a given endpoint - your phone).

None of this is required for internet connections, as you get connectivity via a router which is the Internet-facing address for other devices to see. Things were established this way initially because there’s no need for an endpoint device to be directly exposed (plus hardware and software capabilities at the time).

Also, I hope to never see the day when all consumer endpoint devices are directly on the internet. That’s a bad idea in so many ways (and why I argue IPv6 is generally useless for endpoint consumer devices). IP6 is great for plenty of other reasons.

jeffhykin,

no need for an endpoint to be directly exposed

If I were an engineer in the past, trying to send a message back to an endpoint (e.g. a server response) I would’ve reached for everything having a static IP, same as the EID system with phones, instead of the DHCP multi-tier NAT type system with temp addresses.

I’m all but certain they didnt do it for privacy reasons at the time.

BearOfaTime, (edited )

Well, endpoints then were largely mainframe type systems, long before PCs existed, let alone network-capable PCs and http. So it was a different idea than what we have today.

Before internet, you could connect two physically disparate systems using point-to-point, permanently switched connections (so it always consumed a potential connection even when no data was being transmitted). If you had Point A connected to Point B, you need a third connection to comm with Point C. The idea was, if B already had a connection to C, why not share that bandwidth/connection so A only needed one connection? And then apply a data-switching concept (e.g. Packet switching), instead of circuit-switching.

We were still using P-to-P connections in the late 90’s because internet capabilites weren’t quite up to what some systems needed for latency, timing, and bandwidth.

At first, just getting two endpoint mainframes connected was a big deal, and individual user devices wasn’t much of a thought, yet. Most stuff was still mainframe based, so having those connected was sufficient for user communication/data sharing anyway. Since user connectivity wasn’t the main concern - moving data from one system to another was, say an entity has 2 locations, and needs to sync the systems in those two locations. So you either use a circuit-switched P-to-P, with downtime for users when sync is happening, or send physical tapes (magnetic or even punched paper tapes) cross-country to move data, with that data being out-of-sync and requiring manual updates to re-sync.

Routing was necessary primarily for backbone transit, secondarily for organizations with multiple systems, hence the IP Classful approach.

DHCP is a local network requirement - ask any Admin about static IP addresses - that’s a nightmare. I don’t even like it at home with a handful of devices.

NAT is a result of the limited IP address space, not DHCP - there’s simply not enough addresses in 32bits for every local device to have a public IP (nor would you want this), plus having multiple services behind a router using local addressing. Even with static local addresses, you’d need NAT.

Also, look at the time - if you had a LAN in the late 80’s, it was something like Banyan Vines or Netware IPX (neither of which was routable originally), for local comms between local systems. Any internet/external network requirements were for (again) moving data between disparate locations. The idea that a workstation needed specific internet/non-local access to (what?) really didn’t make sense. It would comm with a local data source (mainframe/IBM 360, etc), and that system would manage retrieving or syncing data from elsewhere. A workstation was largely a dumb terminal before PCs (other than actual “workstations” which is a different animal) .

JakenVeina,

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.

jeffhykin, (edited )

Cell phones don’t get a new phone 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. Right?

JakenVeina,

Main difference there being that switching cities means probably switching ISPs. You can absolutely carry over your IP address when you move between the same provider, if that’s part of your service plan, and that may well happen with some ISPs even without it being part of your plan. There just isn’t really much of a need for people to carry a static IP, except for some businesses, and I’d say the main reason is that people don’t visit websites by memorizing and typing in an IP. They do memorize and type in phone numbers.

SchmidtGenetics,

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.

lemmyng,
@lemmyng@lemmy.ca avatar

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.

jeffhykin,

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?

lemmyng,
@lemmyng@lemmy.ca avatar

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.

jeffhykin, (edited )

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

  1. A static IP
  2. An always online server
  3. The device needs a daemon that tries to connect to an always online server, and authenticates itself
  4. That server needs to manually reroute traffic (through a VPN or some other means) from the static IP address to the device, wherever it might be

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.

Thats a sizable edit!

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.

lemmyng,
@lemmyng@lemmy.ca avatar
  1. A static IP is actually not necessary, but what you need is a consistent identifier. For the server, that’s typically a DNS address, but for clients and peer to peer networks there’s other ways to identify devices, usually tied to an account or some other key kept on the device.
  2. For centralised communications yes, you would need an always online server. For decentralised networks, you just need a sufficient amount of online peers, but each individual peer does not need to be always online.
  3. Pretty much, yes. Even push notifications on cell phones work this way.
  4. Route, yes. Manually. VPN is usually not necessary. In modern web-based services this is typically done with websockets, which are client-initiated (so the client address can change), and which allow two-way communication and typically only require a keepalive packet from the client every minute or so.

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.

henfredemars,

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.

JesterIzDead,

No, computers can’t share IPs

IHateReddit,

They can share the same router and therefore have the same public IP.

JesterIzDead,

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.

lemmyng,
@lemmyng@lemmy.ca avatar

A phone number does not uniquely identify a phone either.

lemmyng,
@lemmyng@lemmy.ca avatar

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.

JesterIzDead,

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.

lemmyng,
@lemmyng@lemmy.ca avatar

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.

JesterIzDead,

You’d have to know more about BGP to know any cast doesn’t function as you think it does

lemmyng,
@lemmyng@lemmy.ca avatar

Ah, I see we are resorting to ad hominem attacks now.

JesterIzDead,

lol ok sally

800XL,

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.

lemmyng,
@lemmyng@lemmy.ca avatar

Phone numbers can be spoofed, and SIM cards can be cloned. The analogy stands.

dhork,

Who is gonna assign it? There is no one central authority who decides who gets a computer number or not.

slazer2au,

There kinda is IANA . They assign addresses to regional registraties like RIPE, APNIC, LANIC who in turn assign addresses to ISPs and large corporations.

dhork,

They assign ip addresses, they don’t assign hardware addresses. The closest thing to a hardware address is a MAC address.

slazer2au,

In that case it is the IEEE who allocate Macs to orgs

jeffhykin,

Same people who decide phone numbers and domain names. We already have central registries, why does it being a computer make it harder to have a central authority?

dhork,

Because phone numbers and domain named are managed by network operators, not manufacturers. A phone doesn’t ship from the factory with a phone number, it gets assigned by the mobile operator based on the subscriber’s number. Same with domain names, computers aren’t shipped with them, they get assigned later.

whostosay,

Without unique number assignment, the Internet would not function

Boozilla,
@Boozilla@lemmy.world avatar

UDID is kind-of what you’re talking about, but not an exact analogue.

valen,
@valen@lemmy.world avatar

That would be a privacy nightmare.

slazer2au,

Yep. See EUI-64 IPv6 addressing.

user224,
@user224@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Well, phone numbers do get re-assigned too.

MajorHavoc,

Lack of demand.

Phones having unique unalterable numbers was never an intentional feature desired by users, just a limitation of the available technology.

Computer network cards do have such a number, their MAC address, but modern ones can scramble it to avoid being tracked, without any loss of ability to be reached by everyone you want to be reached by.

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