Re: [hybi] method of allocation of reserved bits to extensions

[Brian <[e-mail]>]

This seems fine to me too, but a bit more complicated than just
letting extensions prepend a byte for themselves to the payload data.
Honestly.. quibbling over wasting 7 bits by allocating a whole byte in
this day and age seems silly, even for things like cell phones.  My
cell phone (iPhone on AT&T in Los Angeles) is routinely able to
transfer data at over a megabit per second (and even faster when I get
out of the city).  So if there are a small handfull of "wasted" bytes
in the payload to accommodate extension data/flags, nobody's really
going to notice.

I would support the dynamically allocated flags mechanism that can
dynamically add more bytes to accomodate more extensions, but I just
think it seems a little unnecessary.

Brian

On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 12:50 AM, "Andy Green (林安廸)" <[e-mail]> wrote:
> On 05/20/2011 07:42 AM, Somebody in the thread at some point said:
>>
>> Gabriel
>>
>> I'm concerned that if we really restrict usage of the reserved bits,
>> then we will force extensions into using whole bytes at the start of
>> the payload, when they really only want 1 bit.  If we really do get
>> into the situation where we have many extensions, then we could have
>> many wasted bits.
>>
>> How about just having a mechanism that if we can allocated as many
>> reserved bits as we like, and if more than 3 are allocated then extra
>> bytes are prepended to the payload (as needed) for the extra bits.
>> Thus we could have unlimited extensions needing unlimited bits.
>>
>> If a client doesn't want to play that game, then all it need do is
>> never handshake with extensions that need more than 3 bits.
>
> Sounds good to me.
>
> This idea of reserved bits being misered is not only unnecessary but it is
> really inefficient - it'll lead to only special, big, connected players
> being able to use them and because they are permanently allocated to
> particular extensions in that model, there will always be a desire to
> withhold them "for later".
>
> Dynamic allocation way anyone can randomly decide their extension will use
> them, no central allocation is needed and multiple extensions using reserved
> bits will always play well (plus or minus other doubts about extension
> ordering not related to reserved bits).
>
> -Andy
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