Re: iSCSI base64 and 12-92

[Paul Koning <ni1d@arrl.net>]

Excerpt of message (sent 23 May 2002) by Bill Studenmund:
> On Thu, 23 May 2002, Julian Satran wrote:
> 
> > Dear colleagues,
> >
> > I looked again at cryptography needs and I think that large numbers will
> > be needed and base64 is a decent and not invented here way to express
> > them.
> 
> Just curious, which alogorythm needs them?

I was wondering the same.  Quite possibly I muddled things by talking
earlier about cases that don't actually appear in iSCSI.  The ones
that DO appear in iSCSI all involve strings, not numbers.  (That
includes SRP -- it uses large integers at some steps of the algorithm,
but externally at the protocol level it is specified in terms of
strings.) 

Apart from that, I don't see any reason at all why that means we
should allow Base64 for "ordinary" integers.  I remember a number of
comments objecting to that idea and none in favor of it, nor any
reason why it should be done.  So why do it?

       paul