Re: iSCSI: Decimal encoding - why 64 bits ?

[Bill Studenmund <wrstuden@wasabisystems.com>]

On Fri, 5 Jul 2002, Julian Satran (Actcom) wrote:

> I wonder how natural it will feel for somebody to have and IP address
> encoded exclusively in hex, or a TargetPortalGroup appearing as decimal in a
> directory and having to be transliterated.

Well, we'll find out with IPv6 addresses, as the only representation of
them I've seen is for them to be in hex. :-)

As to TargetPortalGroup, why is it a binary string? Yes, you mentioned in
another note that it has no ordering ("greater" and "lesser" don't make
sense), so it's not a number like say ErrorRecoveryLevel (where ordering
is important).

But is its in-memory representation really important? Does it matter if a
host represents the value from "TargetPortalGroupTag=1" internally as
00 01 (BE 16 bits) or 01 00 (LE 16 bits) or 00 00 00 01 (BE 32 bits) or
01 00 00 00 (LE 32 bits)? I don't think so. As long as the value is
interpreted right (the initiator sends the right ascii representation, and
the target ties an ascii representation to the right device) I really
don't see how the internal representation matters. So thus I don't see why
it's a binary string, as internal representation is the heart of a binary
string. :-)

Take care,

Bill