Looking at the RFC it's never explained why this is needed. Or was needed back i...

echoangle · 2025-07-06T13:58:42 1751810322

> Looking at the RFC it's never explained why this is needed.

Chapter 5.1 (Suggested Uses) has at least some vague suggestions:

> Some uses for the LOC RR have already been suggested, including the

> USENET backbone flow maps, a "visual traceroute" application showing

> the geographical path of an IP packet, and network management

> applications that could use LOC RRs to generate a map of hosts and

> routers being managed.

edent · 2025-07-06T13:46:47 1751809607

RFCs are, in my experience, vague about the problem they're attempting to solve.

There's no reason this couldn't be a human-readable string like "42 Wallaby Way, Sidney".

teddyh · 2025-07-07T09:26:12 1751880372

SNMP sysLocation already existed, with its free-form text content. Presumably, people wanted something both more precise and machine-readable.