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Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2014 10:16:01 +0200
Message-ID: <CA+s+GJB_zpgth4=7O2vAOH2RPTz=9xZtbWH=dr6hYzDm8osNyw@mail.gmail.com>
From: Wladimir <laanwj@gmail.com>
To: Matt Whitlock <bip@mattwhitlock.name>
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Cc: Bitcoin Dev <bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net>
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Proposal: allocate 8 service bits for
 experimental use
Precedence: list

On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 10:08 AM, Wladimir <laanwj@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 10:02 AM, Matt Whitlock <bip@mattwhitlock.name> wrote:
>> On Tuesday, 17 June 2014, at 9:57 am, Wladimir wrote:
>>> Yes, as I said in the github topic
>>> (https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/4351) I suggest we adapt a
>>> string-based name space for extensions.
>>
>> Why use textual strings? These fields are not for human consumption. Why not use UUIDs, which are fixed length and will not waste as much bandwidth in the protocol? Or if you'd prefer a hierarchical namespace, you could use OIDs, a la ASN.1.

Also it IS useful for these fields to be human readable for
statistics, peer list views and such. When encountering a new, unknown
extension when connecting to a node it's much more useful to get a
google-able string to find out what it is about, than some long
hexadecimal or dotted-number identifier.

Wladimir