(ii) the user can find information about a great text editor.

In contrast, upon looking at the IP address

199.184.165.136, hardly any user draws either conclusion.
- Names can refer to nodes, groups of nodes, data items, or similar abstractions.
- A single node can have many names and addresses. For example, the WWW server www.xemacs.
org has the name www.xemacs.org, it has the IP address 199.184.165.136 and, assuming that the
server is attached to an Ethernet, it has a 48-bit IEEE MAC address.
- The mapping between user-friendly names like www.xemacs.org and the addresses relevant for
network operation is Fundamentals 183 carried out by binding services.
- This mapping is also often referred to as name resolution. In our example, the domain name service
(DNS) provides the mapping from the name to the IP address while the address resolution protocol
(ARP) maps the IP address to a MAC address.

Address management tasks

We summarize the fundamental tasks of address management, which are independent of the type of
addresses:
 Address allocation In general, this denotes the assignment of an address to an entity from an address
pool.
 Address deallocation In on-demand addressing schemes, the address space often has a small-to
moderate size. The node population in sensor networks is intrinsically dynamic, with nodes dying or
moving away and new nodes being added to the network. If the addresses of the leaving nodes were not
put back into the address pool for reuse, the address pool would be exhausted eventually and no
addresses could be allocated to new nodes. Address deallocation can be either graceful or abrupt. In
graceful deallocation, a node explicitly sends out control packets to give up its address. In abrupt
deallocation, the node disappears or crashes and consequently does not send appropriate control
packets, leaving the responsibility to detect and deallocate the node’s address to the network. When
very large address spaces are used, like for example the IEEE 802.3 MAC addresses of 48-bits length,
address deallocation is not an issue.
 Address representation A format for representing addresses needs to be negotiated and implemented.
 Conflict detection/resolution Address conflicts can occur in networks with distributed assignment of
on-demand addresses or in case of mergers of so-far distinct networks. If conflicts cannot be tolerated,
they must be resolved.
 Binding If several addressing layers are used, a mapping between the different layers has to be
provided. For example, in IP networks, an IP address has to be mapped to a MAC address using the
ARP protocol. Any address management scheme for sensor and ad hoc networks is occasionally faced
with network partitions and network merge events. Consider for example the network shown in
Figure 7.1. If the critical node runs out of energy, the network is split into two partitions that have no
connectivity anymore. The critical issue here is address deallocation. Both subnetworks should detect
that several nodes cannot be reached anymore and their addresses should be reclaimed. On the other
hand, address deallocation and reallocation of reclaimed addresses should not happen too quickly. If for
some reason the network remerges, the same address allocation as before the partition event is in place
and no address conflicts need to be resolved. Critical node