[ale] Q: IEEE-Float byte order on Network convention

[Gary Maltzen]

see `man xdr`

This implements the RPC convention for machine-independent transmission of
binary data.

> A question for network gurus:
>  I plan to send binary packets including IEEE floating-point types over an
> InterNet connection between a client and server. The client will initially
> be hosted on an i86 box (interchangeably Linux or WinNT), and later
> possibly a PPC box. The server could be a variety of Win or *nix hosts. I
> will write the code for client and server, but not the net interfaces.
> Transport will be TCP/IP and UDP/IP, will probably use SSL, and may use
> HTTP tunnelling. (I am new to detail on most of these: please excuse any
> obvious contradictions, but do bring them to my attention.)
>
> I have only done this with packets of my own design on a direct serial
> links between 68K and i86 boxen: the natural orderings were indeed
> different, but (thankfully!) the data types were otherwise compatible for
> the respective compilers. (I put reordering responsibiliy on the
> i86-hosted responders, since they had the lowest overall loading in that
> net.)
>
> If there is a convention for byte- and word-order in transfering
> non-integer types over a net connection, I would prefer to observe it.
> Please tell me of any, direct me to references, or share your
> experiences.


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