> " it's important both ends of the system know how to interpret the data they are dealing with - so this is important." As I say, it's treated, by both sides,

> " it's important both ends of the system know how to interpret the data they are dealing with - so this is important." As I say, it's treated, by both sides, as 8 bytes of random data. Never as integers. The endianness here is irrelevant. The spec is going into way more detail than it needs.