[ivoras]

Nothing except efficiency is preventing us from using names as parts of network/subnet hierarchy instead of numbers, e.g. : steve.home.town.country instead of 192.168.5.6 (or the same thing on IPv6), and even efficiency could be improved by the smart use of hashing... BUT! The major problem I see here is that there simply are more numbers than words.

In practice, especially at large companies, it will certainly without a doubt degrade into workstation001, workstation002... workstation999 and then we're in effect back where we started from - using numbers.

This looks like a solution in search of a problem.

[tgflynn]

That's not what NDN is about.

NDN assigns names (or addresses) to data contents, not physical machines/interfaces like IP does. So it's conceptually quite different from the way IP routing works.

The issue you mention is already solved by DNS.

This looks like a solution in search of a problem.

NDN attempts to make content distribution more efficient through caching. Whether solving that problem justifies rewriting the entire network stack is highly questionable.

[j_burke]

While content distribution is a significant motivation, a fair amount of the current research is looking at benefits beyond caching: i.e., what do you get with web-style semantics at the lower layers, per-packet crypto, name--rather than host-based addressing, etc.