RE: iSCSI: BASE64 and numerical values

["Michael Krueger" <michael.krueger@windriver.com>]

On Saturday, May 18, 2002 1:31 AM, Julian Satran wrote:
> Yes for regular numerical values it makes sense. We will have to keep
> it for large numerical values used for cryptography.  Julo

I'm glad to see that base-64 encoding will be dropped for numbers, but I'm
afraid I still have a small issue with the language being used here.  As I
understand it, "large numerical values" are NOT used for cryptography; the
keys, challenges, responses, etc., are large BINARY ITEMS*, not large
numbers.  I still believe that failing to make a distinction between numbers
and binary items is what's behind a lot of the confusion and ambiguity in
this realm of the spec (e.g., decimal representation, leading zeroes,
definitions of field size, byte swapping issues, etc.).

Michael

*I have no special attachment to the term "binary items"; call them "binary
strings," "bit patterns," or whatever you like . . . but please just don't
call them "numeric" or "numbers."

--
Michael J. Krueger              mailto:michael.krueger@windriver.com
Wind River Networks                         http://www.windriver.com
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