Re: iSCSI-related conclusions from Orlando interim Meeting

["Jim Hafner" <hafner@almaden.ibm.com>]

Mark and David,

Though we haven't discussed this within NDT, this issue is a bit broader
(applicable to all key:value pairs in login and text messages).

Some have suggested full C syntax, others have said that hex is sufficient.

I'd like to support the two most important cases:
1) representation of 'integer' type values with represent a quantity (like
length, size, count, etc.)
2) binary strings (as might occur in WWUIs, or other binary entities that
don't necessarily represent a 'quantity'

For the first, decimal seems the most natural.  For the latter, hex seems
best suited.    For WWUI's, we've already weakly proposed a format that
implies hex.  Perhaps in other cases, the prefix '0x' or the prefix 'hex='
would be a good way to indicate non-decimal format.

Jim Hafner


Mark Bakke <mbakke@cisco.com>@ece.cmu.edu on 01-22-2001 06:16:55 AM

Sent by:  owner-ips@ece.cmu.edu


To:   David Robinson <David.Robinson@EBay.Sun.COM>
cc:   ips@ece.cmu.edu
Subject:  Re: iSCSI-related conclusions from Orlando interim Meeting



That's right.  The N&D team will send a new draft soon with the
encodings.  Some of the options for encoding binary data are hex,
decimal, octal, and uuencode.  We will probably suggest hex; it
uses more space than unicode, but for most binary names, is the
simplest and most readable.  Please stay tuned.

David Robinson wrote:
>
> Black_David@emc.com wrote:
> > It's a bit cryptic.  The conclusion in the room was
> > to convert binary values to/from text representations
> > for the purpose of negotiation (and use UTF-8 for the
> > text).  This was felt to be simpler than defining new
> > formats for binary values.
>
> So if I want to send the binary data 0101101011110000
> I first turn that into text "5AF0" then encode that into
> UTF-8 "5AF0" (printable ASCII is a no-op in UTF-8)?
>
> I'll buy that.
>
> Any statement as to the text encoding? Hex? Decimal? Octal?
>
>         -David

--
Mark A. Bakke
Cisco Systems
mbakke@cisco.com
763.398.1054