Permit using strings in place of subnet IDs, or finding subnetsIDs based on strings
I couldn't find an issue about this specifically, which was surprising, because it has come up many times that users want to be able to use strings for subnet IDs, in order to use a naming convention that is meaningful to them.
A couple of recent posts on kea-users have mentioned this again:
"First, seems currently we can only assign numeric IDs to subnets, but for subnet management, it’s more convenient to use a string, is it possible to add this feature? " and "I can confirm – the lack of support for string ID is pretty annoying right now, and forces me to create ranges for specific applications, which will not scale well in production."
I realize we need a unique ID, and perhaps need a numeric ID to make some operations faster, but I wonder if we could create what we need for indexing and so on, while still displaying the string?
A related issue #1596 asks for storing user context in the lease. I expect some of the same use cases apply, where operators need to be able to located leases based on a naming convention they are using in their network, rather than the Kea subnetID.
Anyway, while we may require numeric subnetIDs for indexing purposes, is there something we can do with user-context to permit adding strings as aliases?