[hughesjj]

Isn't it like literally a data structure issue though? Like you have to route on prefixes? Like how else would you know where to go?

Ip routing is kind of like a tree (not a graph) in the ip regards, how would you get around it?

I admittedly don't know as much as I'd like about network, hence why I'm posing this question ;-)

If theres a way to efficiently model hierarchical domains for stuff like DNS/IP i'd love to know. Like, consistent hash rings maybe, but then we'd be reintroducing ring topologies...

Oh wait duh though. A cell tower is owned by a single company. Yeah that's prolly doable, the company can always buy beefier routers if they need the memory. And realistically speaking the virtual tree could be closely aligned to the physical one given how cell towers work.

[somat]

The way it is done is to have an invisible layer underneath (mpls perhaps) that can do the routing.

However the correct ip way to do it would to have tcp(layer 4) decoupled from ip(layer 3) such that an ip address could change while maintaining the tcp stream. unfortunately this was not done, tcp has too many layer violations and is firmly interlocked with ip. I don't know much about the state of the art, does http over udp (quic) allow for ip address change?

[wastedpotential]

Yes. Packets contain a connection identifier, so the connection can continue were it left off when the client switches ip.