Actually, for actual implementation, there are subtle differences between AS 0x0002 ans AS 0x00000002. True, they are the same AS in 16 and 32 bit representation, and, for allocation policy, they are the same, but, in actual router guts, there are limited circumstances where you might actually care which one you are talking about. Owen --On December 15, 2005 1:45:20 PM -0500 Todd Vierling <tv@duh.org> wrote:
On Wed, 14 Dec 2005, Robert Bonomi wrote:
That's an example of the lack of plain English in the proposal. Why don't we just talk about AS numbers greater than 65535 or AS numbers less than 65536?
Because there is more to it than just that. :)
No, there isn't. AS numbers are integers. It just so happens that there are now two representations of said integers with different domain bounds.
Any other interpretation simply adds too much confusion. After all, "2 byte AS2" vs. "4 byte AS2" implies *more than* 4 bytes -- because you have to use metadata beyond the 4 bytes to represent which "type" of AS you have.
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