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  • End Ian

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    Cassiano R. N. Moralles
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    This document discusses endianness in computer architectures and how it relates to network byte order. It explains that big-endian places the most significant byte in the lowest address while little-endian places the least significant byte lowest. Network byte order is specified as big-endian to avoid confusion. The C program shown converts a long variable between host and network byte order using macros to demonstrate how the bytes are ordered on little-endian versus big-endian processors.

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    This document discusses endianness in computer architectures and how it relates to network byte order. It explains that big-endian places the most significant byte in the lowest address while little-endian places the least significant byte lowest. Network byte order is specified as big-endian to avoid confusion. The C program shown converts a long variable between host and network byte order using macros to demonstrate how the bytes are ordered on little-endian versus big-endian processors.

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    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    26 views2 pages

    End Ian

    Uploaded by

    Cassiano R. N. Moralles
    This document discusses endianness in computer architectures and how it relates to network byte order. It explains that big-endian places the most significant byte in the lowest address while little-endian places the least significant byte lowest. Network byte order is specified as big-endian to avoid confusion. The C program shown converts a long variable between host and network byte order using macros to demonstrate how the bytes are ordered on little-endian versus big-endian processors.

    Copyright:

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    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    Exploring Endian

    As you read from Section 3.2 of TCP/IP Sockets in C: Practical Guide for Programmers, different architectures use different byte ordering for multibyte quantities. A big-endian machine places the most significant byte in the lowest address while a little-endian machine places the least significant byte in the lowest address. To avoid confusion when communicating between different architectures, the Sockets interface specifies a standard byte ordering called networkbyte order, which happens to be big-endian. Consequently, all network communication should be big-endian, irrespective of the client or server architecture. Sockets provides a set of macros to convert to and from host to network byte order(i.e., [hn]to[nh][sl]( )). Consider the following C program: #include <stdio.h> main() { int i; long x = 0x112A380; unsigned char *ptr = (char *) &x;

    /* Loop variable */ /* Value to play with */ /* Byte pointer */

    /* Observe value in host byte order */ printf("x in hex: %x\n", x); printf("x by bytes: "); for (i=0; i < sizeof(long); i++) printf("%x\t", ptr[i]); printf("\n"); /* Observe value in network byte order */ x = htonl(x); printf("\nAfter htonl()\n"); printf("x in hex: %x\n", x); printf("x by bytes: "); for (i=0; i < sizeof(long); i++) printf("%x\t", ptr[i]); printf("\n"); } This program shows how the long variable x with value 112A380 (hexadecimal) is stored. When this program is executed on a little-endian processor, it outputs the following: x in hex: 112a380 x by bytes: 80 a3 After htonl() x in hex: 80a31201 x by bytes: 1 12

    12

    a3

    80

    When we examine the individual bytes of x, we find the least significant byte (0x80) in the lowest address. After we call htonl( ) to convert to network byte order, we get the most significant byte (0x1) in the lowest address. Of course, if we try to print the value of x after converting its byte order, we get a meaningless number. Lets execute the same program on a big-endian processor: x in hex: 112a380 x by bytes: 1 12 After htonl() x in hex: 112a380 x by bytes: 1 12

    a3

    80

    a3

    80

    Here we find the most significant byte (0x1) in the lowest address. Calling htonl( ) to convert to network byte order does not change anything because network byte order is already big endian.

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