Re: [TLS] Record header size?

[Peter Gutmann <[e-mail]>]

Short, Todd <[e-mail]> writes:

>Has there been any consideration to changing the record header for encrypted
>traffic to be 4 bytes (i.e. 32-bits)? 5 bytes is a very awkward size, and
>some processors do not handle odd byte offsets well (it was a complaint I
>heard from Cisco router/switch engineers).

Not just Cisco, other hardware people have run into it as well.  You don't
need the version field at all because it's been negotiated in the handshake,
for the remainder of the session it's just wasted bytes.  So having a 1-byte
type and 3-byte length for a combined 32-bit field would work fine.

Peter.