At 08:22 AM 2/18/98 GMT, Lutz Donnerhacke wrote:
* Jon Callas wrote:
>Personally, I like the old form of packet headers, as they simply denote a
>1, 2, or 4-octet length, with no funny stuff. The "new" ones, though, are
>useful for doing streaming.
But the old ones does not contain all packet types (esp. CTB_SUBKEY,
CTB_SECRET_SUBKEY)
Sure it does. The subkey packet is 14, and the secret subkey is 7. Both of
these fit within a 4-bit field.
There is nothing magical about the two header types. Each packet is a TLV
(tag-length-value) record. The packet header is the way that the tag and
length are encoded. The "old" headers have 4 bits for the tag, and the
"new" ones have 6. Other than numeric value, there is nothing that forces
use of either format. You can put a packet with a tag of 0-15 in either
header.
>There is a difference, in that the old headers only have 4 bits of opcode
>for packet types. However, since we've eliminated the comment packet, we
>fit into 4 bits. If we wanted room, we could always kill the marker packet
You did not eliminate the comment packet. It's in use! Please to not outlaw
existing implemetations.
Uh oh. We're going to have to have a discussion of this. I'll fork it off
to another thread.
Jon
-----
Jon Callas jon(_at_)pgp(_dot_)com
CTO, Total Network Security 4200 Bohannon Drive
Network Associates, Inc. Menlo Park, CA 94025
(650) 473-2860
Fingerprints: D1EC 3C51 FCB1 67F8 4345 4A04 7DF9 C2E6 F129 27A9 (DSS)
665B 797F 37D1 C240 53AC 6D87 3A60 4628 (RSA)