Endpoints

An Endpoint is a fate sharing region relative to network traffic. It sinks and sources network traffic and if it crashes, all the state regarding that end of the network connections goes with it. An endpoint is one of the things the Name System names and what you get a route to when you do a lookup in the Naming System.

In many cases an Endpoint will be equivalent to a Host.

Configuration

An Endpoint must be configured to know its name and maybe the name of the Site it's a part of. If all the neighbors it sees are part of the same Site, it's a pretty good bet that this Endpoint is part of that Site too so it ought to be easy to autoconfigure this.

Protocols

An Endpoint runs a Neighbor Discovery Protocol to determine its Site's name if that's not configured, to determine if it's on a border between two Sites, to let its neighbors know what Site it's in, and to learn information for its link state advertisement if the Site uses that for building its maps.

An Endpoint listens to a beacon protocol from the Site to learn routes to the Site Representatives and the Site's nameservers. It also learns the Endpoint Name of the Site.

Note: Just what goes in the Neighbor Discovery Protocol and what goes in the Site Beacon Protocol is unclear to me. Maybe there's only one protocol.

An Endpoint communicates with the Name System to install and maintain its name and route.

Open Questions

I think I may need to separate Endpoints and Hosts. It's really the Hosts that run those protocols and a Host may host one or more Endpoints.

Also, the Name System names Endpoints but it may name Endpoints that are sort of Anycast Endpoints. For instance, Sites and Coalitions should be named in the Name System and when you try and communicate with them you should get one of their (possibly multiple) representatives. This is how you get maps given a route of Endpoint Names.