Re: iSCSI: Decimal encoding - why 64 bits ?

["Julian Satran \(Actcom\)" <Julian_Satran@actcom.net.il>]

Martins - you have a very good point - and we considered briefly to forbid
decimal from the outset but many of the team felt that this  would be a bad
idea as values get copied from a context to another. And the we looked at
coding for other RFCs and we found decimal everywhere - addresses,
identifiers, ports etc., and thought it would be a bad idea to forbid them
in iSCSI

Julo
----- Original Message -----
From: "Martins Krikis" <mkrikis@yahoo.com>
To: <Black_David@emc.com>; <Julian_Satran@il.ibm.com>
Cc: <ips@ece.cmu.edu>
Sent: Thursday, July 04, 2002 2:45 AM
Subject: RE: iSCSI: Decimal encoding - why 64 bits ?


> --- Black_David@emc.com wrote:
>
> > Replying to a couple of messages on this topic.
> >
> > --- Use of decimal for binary items
> >
> > > There was NEVER a discussion about forbidding
> > decimal for binary items.
>
> There may not have been a big discussion about it,
> since everybody was concentrating on disallowing
> base64 for numbers (yes, all of them; IMO most
> people seemed to think that binary strings would
> suffice and that large-numerical-values aren't
> necessary) or on limiting the size numerical values
> encoded in decimal. But it was certainly mentioned
> multiple times under various subject lines:
>
> http://www.pdl.cmu.edu/mailinglists/ips/mail/msg09780.html
>
> http://www.pdl.cmu.edu/mailinglists/ips/mail/msg10125.html
>
> http://www.pdl.cmu.edu/mailinglists/ips/mail/msg10153.html
>
> http://www.pdl.cmu.edu/mailinglists/ips/mail/msg10250.html
>
> > > It would be counterproductive to forbid them
> > > as they are so widely used in programming.
>
> > The request to forbid them seems to have evolved
> > into a request to
>
> I'd like to disagree about the programming part,
> but more importantly, why don't we reinstate
> the original request to forbid using decimal for
> binary items? It is not a very useful way
> of representing even short binary items because
> there is no way to express the number of leading
> 0-bytes, for example. In case there is a vote on
> this, I'm against using decimal for binary items.
>
> > --- 64 vs. 32 bits
> >
> > I went back to the mailing list - and there was a
> > clear consensus to keep
> > it to 64 bits (my original proposal was unlimited
> > and  I suggested rhen 128
> > to alleviate concerns about conversion difficulty
> > for unlimited numbers).
> >
> > That matches what I recall from mailing list
> > discussion, 32 bits was not
> > considered at the time.
>
> Getting it down from unlimited was way more
> important than getting it down to 32, but it
> certainly was considered:
>
> http://www.pdl.cmu.edu/mailinglists/ips/mail/msg09804.html
>
> http://www.pdl.cmu.edu/mailinglists/ips/mail/msg09808.html
>
> http://www.pdl.cmu.edu/mailinglists/ips/mail/msg09810.html
>
>
> > > The issue was raised without checking the
> > > libraries:
> >
> > [... snip ...]
> >
> > > I don't know about Windmills - but I assume
> > > that most modern development
> > > environments are supporting 64bit integers.
>
> Some of us are working in kernel-space, and there
> aren't many reasons for a kernel running on a 32-bit
> architecture to provide 64-bit integer conversion
> routines.
>
> I am not saying that I don't know how to write
> such a routine, just that there are normal reasons
> why some people may prefer 32 to 64. In case there
> is a vote, I'm for 32.
>
> Martins Krikis, Intel Corp.
>
> Disclaimer: these opinions are mine and may not
>             be those of my employer.
>
>
>
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