Adresave

Adresave is a proposed data model and addressing protocol designed to unify physical postal addresses with digital network addresses into a single interoperable schema. The concept appears in speculative discussions about future internet and logistics architectures and is not part of any formal standard.

The core idea of adresave is to treat a location or endpoint as a structured address that can be resolved by a common mechanism across different systems. An adresave is typically envisioned as a hierarchical set of fields, including region or country, locality, street or network segment, and unit or device identifier. In addition, addresses may carry metadata such as purpose, privacy level, validity, version, and provenance. The model emphasizes extensibility, allowing new fields to be added as technologies evolve while preserving backward compatibility for existing components.

Resolution in adresave involves a resolver or namespace service capable of translating an adresave into actionable routing information for physical mail, delivery logistics, or digital routing. Resolving an adresave may produce multiple outputs, such as a mailing route, a network path, or a provisioning instruction for a device, with safeguards to respect privacy constraints and access controls.

Applications of adresave are typically discussed in theoretical or prototype contexts, including smart cities, parcel delivery optimization, IoT device provisioning, and unified identity management. Proponents argue that a single addressing layer could reduce fragmentation and improve interoperability between postal, logistics, and network infrastructures. Critics point to complexity, governance, privacy risks, and the challenge of achieving broad adoption across diverse systems. See also: address, postal address, IP address, DNS, digital identity.