RE: iSCSI: Decimal encoding - why 64 bits ?

[Bill Studenmund <wrstuden@wasabisystems.com>]

On Tue, 2 Jul 2002 Black_David@emc.com wrote:

> Easy does it.  First of all - if someone will go find the mail
> thread that discussed this (I also recall a discussion of
> numbers vs. binary items) I'll take a look at it and make a
> WG chair determination of what was or was not concluded.

Ok, I found some of the confusion.

Here's one of Paul's notes at the end of the thread I was remembering:

http://www.pdl.cmu.edu/mailinglists/ips/mail/msg10302.html

In it he says that he'd like base64 ot be used only for binary strings
(not numbers). He also goes on to say, "For all other integer parameters
-- which are 64 bit or smaller integers -- permit only hex and decimal.'

In http://www.pdl.cmu.edu/mailinglists/ips/mail/msg10303.html, I agreed
with both points above.

In http://www.pdl.cmu.edu/mailinglists/ips/mail/msg10304.html, Shawn
agrees with both myself and Paul, and talks about base64.

In http://www.pdl.cmu.edu/mailinglists/ips/mail/msg10319.html, you (David)
indicated you saw concensus for the base64 part of Paul's comments.

My concusion was that I though we were all agreeing with both parts. I
think we definitely got base64, but not so sure about
no-decimal-binary-strings.

> Kevin's comment that decimal ought to be limited to 32 bits
> is still valid at this point - a reference to prior discussions
> without specifics isn't enough to dismiss it.  My rough
> recollection of the discussion partially matches Julian's -
> we reduced the required size to 64 bits from unlimited on
> the assumption that platforms could cope with this ... and
> now Kevin has raised the issue that two platforms he
> considers important don't cope well with 64 bit arithmetic.
> I don't recall discussion of whether to limit to 32 bits vs.
> 64 bits.
>
> For now, this issue is open.

I think this issue is a seperate one. I am fine with 64 bits (as I don't
see us needing more than 32 with the present draft) or 32 bits.

Take care,

Bill