Consumer technology is about more than isolated systems. A smart bulb is not very useful until it is part of a system. The Internet protocols have been key to enable use to build systems by focusing on the relationships between endpoints rather than all the complexities of each connection. But there is a problem—the DNS names to maintain connectivity expire every year making failure the default because they use meaningful words rather than abstract identifiers. When I first started working on home networking at Microsoft in the 1990s the term conflated home control with other aspects of networking. My first step was to enable packet-connectivity apart from any particular application. I was also thinking about enabling technologies for home control and realized there was no protocol for something as simple as maintaining a relationship between a controller and a device. In those days we did not have smart phones and smart bulbs, so the goal was to connect a light switch to a light fixture. I quickly discovered there was no standard protocol for such relationships. The IP address was supplied by an ISP. The DNS names were not much better since, by default, they expired every year! I finessed the problem by using the network address translator (NAT) to give one stable address within the home but that did not solve the problem of addresses beyond between homes and other local communities. Rather than inventing an entirely new mechanism for stable relationships, we can build on the existing DNS and provide DNS entries (and URLs) that never expire.

中文翻译：

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永远的网址

消费技术不仅仅是孤立的系统。智能灯泡在成为系统的一部分之前并不是很有用。互联网协议一直是通过关注端点之间的关系而不是每个连接的所有复杂性来构建系统的关键。但存在一个问题——用于维持连接的 DNS 名称每年都会过期，因此默认会出现故障，因为它们使用有意义的单词而不是抽象标识符。20 世纪 90 年代，当我第一次开始在 Microsoft 从事家庭网络工作时，这个术语将家庭控制与网络的其他方面混为一谈。我的第一步是启用与任何特定应用程序无关的数据包连接。我还考虑了家庭控制的支持技术，并意识到没有协议可以像维护控制器和设备之间的关系这样简单。当时我们没有智能手机和智能灯泡，所以目标是将电灯开关连接到灯具。我很快发现这种关系没有标准协议。IP 地址由 ISP 提供。DNS 名称也好不了多少，因为默认情况下它们每年都会过期！我通过使用网络地址转换器（NAT）在家庭内提供一个稳定的地址来解决这个问题，但这并没有解决家庭和其他当地社区之间的地址问题。我们可以在现有 DNS 的基础上构建并提供永不过期的 DNS 条目（和 URL），而不是发明一种全新的稳定关系机制。