> The bits start from highest to lowest on a serial connection. This is only true on a big endian serial connection (that is, one that, tautologically, sends t

> The bits start from highest to lowest on a serial connection. This is only true on a big endian serial connection (that is, one that, tautologically, sends the most-significant bit first). Offhand, I think most serial protocols are big endian, but by that logic, most CPUs are little endian, so that doesn't really help. The thing that's actually useful about big endian is not that it's natural (as kangalioo points out, that's little endian) or that it's how humans write numbers (by that logic crap like BCD or decimal floats is a good idea), but that big endian preserves lexicographic order of fixed-width integers.