[ppml] Policy Proposal 2005-9: 4-Byte AS Number

[Scott Leibrand]

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