IPv4 address length technical design

Thu Oct 4 18:25:47 UTC 2012

On Thu, 04 Oct 2012 09:57:34, Johnny Eriksson said:
> Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu wrote:
>
> > And the -10s and -20s were the major reason RFCs refer to octets
> > rather than bytes, as they had a rather slippery notion of "byte"
> > (anywhere from 6 to 9 bits, often multiple sizes used *in the
> > same program*).
>
> Not quite correct.  Anywhere from 1 to 36 bits, and not spanning
> a 36-bit word boundary.  Essentialy what is now known as a bit field.

Right - but in actual programming practice, code tended to distinguish
between a "byte" and "N bit wide field of flags or whatever".  And bytes
as character storage ran from 6 to 9 bits depending on the charset in use.
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