ietf-smime
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: draft-housley-binarytime-00.txt

2004-09-17 04:20:10


1.1  BinaryTime

   Many operating systems represent date and time as an integer.  This
   document specifies an ASN.1 type for representing a date and time in
   a manner that is compatible with these operating systems.  This
   approach has several advantages over the UTCTime and GeneralizedTime
   types.

Not many systems represent data and time in BER as far as I remember.

I do not understand this comment.  The quoted text says that operating
systems use an integer, not a character string.  BER (or other 
encoding) is
going to be applied in either case.  This is essential to resolve endian
issues at a minimum.

An integer encoded in BER is AFAIK not the way to encode seconds on
on any known system. (I have even forgotten x-endian stuff.).

I am very confused here.  Many operating systems use an int32 or an int64 
for time values.  These are easy to DER encode as an ASN.1 INTEGER.


There is a difference between 'easy to do' and 'nothing to do'. 

As P.G. pointed out (forgetting at least one other machine type) even if
time values are represented as integers, the granularity is not the same
everywhere.


<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>