[ppml] Policy Proposal 2005-9: 4-Byte AS Number
Scott Leibrand
sleibrand at internap.com
Thu Dec 22 20:32:08 EST 2005
On 12/22/05 at 2:25pm -0800, Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com> wrote:
> > I don't believe that "2-byte ASN" and "4-byte ASN" constitute obscure
> > terminology.
>
> While I agree in principle, and, do not advocate rewording the policy
> in terms of integer ranges, I do think it would be an improvement to
> speak in terms of 16 bit and 32 bit. After all, while the term byte
> these days usually refers to an octet or 8 bits, this has not always
> been true. In fact, the term byte actually can mean anywhere between
> 5 and 9 bits, depending on machine architecture, encoding scheme,
> etc. Byte has never been an unambiguous term. This is one of the
> reasons almost every RFC is written in terms of bits and octets
> and use of the term byte is rare indeed.
That's a good point. The IETF work on this refers to 4-octet ASNs, not
4-byte. I would have no objections to a s/byte/octet/g replacement,
though I'm curious if Geoff or anyone else has any comments on the
matter...
-Scott
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