RE: iSCSI: Decimal encoding - why 64 bits ?

["Julian Satran" <Julian_Satran@il.ibm.com>]

Paul argued for base64 not being allowed for numbers and we felt badly
about it because numbers might be needed in some cryptography context
(i.e., some binary item plus ordering). That is why base64 stayed in for
large numbers.
There was NEVER a discussion about forbidding decimal for binary items.  It
would be counterproductive to forbid them as they are so widely used in
programming.

Julo


                                                                                                                                            
                      Bill Studenmund                                                                                                       
                      <wrstuden@wasabis        To:       <Black_David@emc.com>                                                              
                      ystems.com>              cc:       Julian Satran/Haifa/IBM@IBMIL, <ips@ece.cmu.edu>                                   
                      Sent by:                 Subject:  RE: iSCSI: Decimal encoding - why 64 bits ?                                        
                      owner-ips@ece.cmu                                                                                                     
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                      07/03/2002 12:01                                                                                                      
                      AM                                                                                                                    
                      Please respond to                                                                                                     
                      Bill Studenmund                                                                                                       
                                                                                                                                            
                                                                                                                                            



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