5 ms·
From rfc801 (transition from NCP to TCP/IP) : "FTP: This is specified in RFC 765. It is very similar to the FTP used with the NCP. The primary differences are
by ajb 6y ago
From rfc801 (transition from NCP to TCP/IP) :
"FTP: This is specified in RFC 765. It is very similar to the FTP used with the NCP. The primary differences are that in addition to the changes for Telnet, that the data channel is limited to 8-bit bytes so FTP features to use other transmission byte sizes are eliminated."
So FTP is older than the standardisation of byte size :-)
- mywittyname 6y agoI feel like 7-bit mode stuck around for a while. I remember seeing the option in modern FTP clients.
- gnfargbl 6y agoI believe that option was more to do with transparently converting between DOS and Unix line terminators. I definitely recall several ruined 2400bps modem downloads in the mid-nineties, because I'd failed to issue a TYPE I command.
- jandrese 6y agoNot so surprising when you consider it was developed in the era of 36 bit word machines.
- jbverschoor 6y agoI thought a byte ment “by eight” What’s a nibble of a byte is 8bits
- okl 6y agoWikipedia has some info (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#History_of_the_conflicting_definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#History_of_the_conflictin...): "The size of the byte has historically been hardware-dependent and no definitive standards existed that mandated the size. Sizes from 1 to 48 bits have been used.[4][5][6][7] The six-bit character code was an often-used implementation in early encoding systems, and computers using six-bit and nine-bit bytes were common in the 1960s. These systems often had memory words of 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, 48, or 60 bits, corresponding to 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, or 10 six-bit bytes. In this era, bit groupings in the instruction stream were often referred to as syllables[a] or slab, before the term byte became common." If you want to be specific, you could say "octet" to describe a set of 8 bits.
- outside1234 6y agoA nibble is half a byte or 4 bits.
- teddyh 6y agoThat’s “nybble”: http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/N/nybble.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/N/nybble.html
- jbverschoor 6y agoI hereby declare 256bytes a whopper, and 512bytes a doublewhopper
- jbverschoor 6y agoSHA-whopper
- danans 6y ago1024 bytes is a vomit, 4096 is a heart-attack.
- cygx 6y agoQuote: > nybble: /nib´l/, nibble, n. ^---- see that word over here?
- IncRnd 6y agoNibble and nybble are alternate spellings.
- tachyonbeam 6y agoAFAIK, before everything was byte-addressable and this became standard, people used to talk about "word" sizes. Some computers would have 36 or 38-bit words. The CDC 6000 had 60-bit words, where that was the smallest size value you could address in memory. For things like characters, you would have to pack multiple chars per word. The Symbolics 3600 Lisp Machine had 36-bit words, and it used some of those bits to tag different data types so every value in memory had some basic type information attached to it.
- gkop 6y agoBy the way, the handy word for an 8-bit byte is “octet” (I have not observed octet used in the software industry, only in school. Don’t use it at work or you might come across as an ass...) I was curious and searched HN and found this 2012 comment explaining octet is essentially an anachronism, as bytes have been standardized at 8 bits: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4649528 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4649528 . Feeling old!
- okl 6y ago> By the way, the handy word for an 8-bit byte is “octet” (I have not observed octet used in the software industry, only in school. Don’t use it at work or you might come across as an ass...) I see it used (and use it myself) from time to time in contexts where you want to differentiate between 7/8/9-bit bytes, mostly when working with embedded/low-level software.
- paxswill 6y agoThe place I see it most is in networking RFCs.
- kstrauser 6y agoBeat me to it. "Octet" is used in a lot of networking documentation, and it also nicely decouples wire formats from any meaning the host system might have for the information. From IP's point of view, an octet is literally that: a bag of 8 bits, without meaning. It's not part of a floating point number, or a UTF character, or anything else but just plain undifferentiated data.
- gkop 6y agoThanks. My application layer bias is showing. We will always need octet in the low-level networking domain, huh.
- zertrin 6y agoOctet is the word used for bytes in French. Data sizes in French locale are expressed most often in ko, Mo, Go, To ...
- IncRnd 6y ago> I thought a byte ment “by eight” There are differing sizes for bytes. This isn't so common, anymore, but that was the point being made. > What’s a nibble of a byte is 8bits A nibble is 4 bits not 8 bits.