Adressersystem

An Adressersystem is a formal scheme for assigning unique identifiers to entities in order to enable location, contact, routing, or retrieval. It defines an address space, the set of all allowable addresses, and an addressing scheme, the set of rules for constructing those addresses. A addressing mechanism uses an address to locate a resource or route communication, while governance ensures consistency and interoperability through standards.

Adressersystem types span geographic, administrative, and technical domains. Geographic address systems assign locations for mail and delivery, such as street addresses, postal codes, and cadastral identifiers. Network addressing assigns identifiers to devices and resources for routing, including IP addresses and MAC addresses. Bibliographic and product addressing use identifiers like ISBN, ISSN, DOI, EAN/UPC. Digital resources on the web use URIs and URLs, which combine a locator and a schema.

Key properties include hierarchy, which supports efficient routing and aggregation, and persistence, which affects long-term retrievability. Some systems are global in scope (IP, DOI), others are local or sector-specific. Maintenance involves standardization bodies and governance, with examples including the ITU, ISO, W3C, and national postal authorities.

Common design goals are unambiguous identification, scalability, stability over time, and interoperability across networks and organizations. Challenges include address exhaustion, privacy concerns, migration of resources, and changes in organizational boundaries.

In practice, Adressersystem design influences logistics, communication, and information retrieval. Well-known examples are the postal address format of Germany, IPv6 addressing for the Internet, and the DOI system for scholarly documents.