Difference between revisions of "Big-endian"
(Has the essentials) |
m (Tweaks) |
||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
| − | '''Big-endian''' is a term created by Danny Cohen (technically, he re-purposed it from Jonathan Swift's satire, "Gulliver's Travels", where it refers to the dispute over whether to start eating a boiled egg from the big end or the little end) for the different schemes for ordering | + | '''Big-endian''' is a term created by Danny Cohen (technically, he re-purposed it from Jonathan Swift's satire, "Gulliver's Travels", where it refers to the dispute over whether to start eating a boiled egg from the big end or the little end) for the different schemes for ordering and numbering [[bit]]s and [[byte]]s within larger entities. |
'Big-endian' refers to machines (like the [[IBM System/360]]) which number the bits and bytes from the least significant (low-order) end. | 'Big-endian' refers to machines (like the [[IBM System/360]]) which number the bits and bytes from the least significant (low-order) end. | ||
| − | Since the preponderance of machines in use when the protocols of the [[TCP/IP]] [[protocol suite]] were developed were big-endian, that became (and remains to this day) the order in which bytes in | + | Since the preponderance of machines in use when the protocols of the [[TCP/IP]] [[protocol suite]] were developed were big-endian, that became (and remains to this day) the order in which bytes in [[word]]s are sent over the network. Therefore, big-endian byte order is sometimes called '''network byte order'''. |
Revision as of 22:03, 11 June 2018
Big-endian is a term created by Danny Cohen (technically, he re-purposed it from Jonathan Swift's satire, "Gulliver's Travels", where it refers to the dispute over whether to start eating a boiled egg from the big end or the little end) for the different schemes for ordering and numbering bits and bytes within larger entities.
'Big-endian' refers to machines (like the IBM System/360) which number the bits and bytes from the least significant (low-order) end.
Since the preponderance of machines in use when the protocols of the TCP/IP protocol suite were developed were big-endian, that became (and remains to this day) the order in which bytes in words are sent over the network. Therefore, big-endian byte order is sometimes called network byte order.
