Re: Magic numbers

The benefit to a network protocol comes when DIME is replacing an existing
protocol (and personally, I like the prospect and I have few candidate
protocols in mind). In such cases, when you do not have a 'meta' protocol
identifier, having a consistent way to recognize (or otherwise rule out)
DIME could make it easy to switch wire protocols incrementally.

Another possible benefit at the network protocol level is that it makes it
easier to identify DIME stream in network protocol analyzers (such as
Ethereal). I would not put a magic number just for that but it is a
worthwhile benefit.

/d
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rich Salz" <[email protected]>
To: "Dror Harari" <[email protected]>
Cc: <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, July 21, 2002 4:59 PM
Subject: Re: [DIME] Magic numbers


> Magic numbers identify file types.  You have a file lying around on-disk,
> you know what to do with it.  What's the benefit to a network protocol?
> Rather than anologies to Java jar files, what about ip/tcp headers?
> /r$
>