Re: IPv6 terminology question

[Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter@gmail.com>]

I don't see why C terminology wins, especially in a reference back to
traditional mini-computer architectures. For example, in the most accurate
ABNF we have for the presentation format, they're called "hex4"
(draft-ietf-sip-ipv6-abnf-fix).

As Bob said, they're generically called "fields" in the defining
RFC, which seems fine to me.

    Brian

On 2009-08-08 10:27, Dunn, Jeffrey H. wrote:
> Colleagues,
> 
> From an applications programming viewpoint, the 2 octets between the colons are called an unsigned short, as in the 16-bit C language data structure. RFC 3493 specifies the IPv6 address structure as 16 unsigned 8-bit integers; however, this is functionally equivalent to 8 unsigned 16-bit integers. As a result, the x's in the message below are unsigned shorts.
> 
> Best Regards, 
>   
> Jeffrey Dunn 
> Info Systems Eng., Lead 
> MITRE Corporation.
> (301) 448-6965 (mobile)
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-v6ops@ops.ietf.org [mailto:owner-v6ops@ops.ietf.org] On Behalf Of Joel Jaeggli
> Sent: Friday, August 07, 2009 4:32 PM
> To: Daniel Stickney
> Cc: IPv6 Operations
> Subject: Re: IPv6 terminology question
> 
> 
> 
> Daniel Stickney wrote:
>>> Daniel,
>>>
>>> This is defined in RFC4291 "IPv6 Addressing Architecture" Section 2.2 "Text Representation of Addresses".  It says:
>>>
>>>    1. The preferred form is x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x, where the 'x's are one to
>>>       four hexadecimal digits of the eight 16-bit pieces of the address.
>>>       Examples:
>>>
>>>          ABCD:EF01:2345:6789:ABCD:EF01:2345:6789
>>>
>>>          2001:DB8:0:0:8:800:200C:417A
>>>
>>>       Note that it is not necessary to write the leading zeros in an
>>>       individual field, but there must be at least one numeral in every
>>>       field (except for the case described in 2.).
>>>
>>> The closest thing to a definition would be to call them "field"s.  For example, "an IPv6 address is made up of 8 colon separated fields".
>>>
>>> Bob
>>>
>>> p.s. Suggest in the future, try reading the actual specifications.  
>>>
>> I appreciate your input Bob.
>>
>> What term do you all normally use in your discussions with other
>> engineers? I'm fine with "field", just haven't heard or seen anyone else
>> use it yet.
> 
> A book that I performed a review on covering this subject states:
> 
> "IPv6 addresses are written in 8 groups of 16 bits each, or 8 groups of
> 4 hexadecimal numbers separated by colons." - Goralski, "The Illustrated
> Network" 2009
> 
> I'm comfortable with that being sufficiently unambiguous, modula you
> have to skip to the next paragraph to get abbreviation.
> 
>> Thanks,
>>
>