Yes, this comes to mind: https://xkcd.com/221/ Otherwise, I suggest being lazy like me: https://www.google.com/search?q=random+number+between+268435456+and+1073741823
David On Tue, Oct 18, 2022 at 1:46 PM Christian Huitema <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 10/18/2022 8:28 AM, David Schinazi wrote: > > Hi Michael, > > While MT's comment might sound nitpicky, he's right in suggesting people > use real PNRGs because we've already had collisions due to human-picked > numbers in the past. The fact that quic-multipath made the same mistake > doesn't make it best practice. (And FWIW I'm also guilty of having made > that mistake in the past). > > I am very much guilty of that too. Mnemonic are nice. In the past, > collision between mnemonics was dealt with by simply looking in the > provisional registry in the WG wiki. That's something we lost when we moved > to an IANA registry, because there is a longer delay between use in an > experiment and publication in an IANA registry than just updating a wiki. > The risk of collision increases. That has to be compensated somehow. But > there is something else. Experiments are for learning. Drafts changes. The > good practice is to use some form of versioning -- definitely change the > Transport Parameter value if you are negotiating something different than > the original draft. Change the frame id if the syntax changes. Etc. So you > don't want to just use 0x1337 or 0xdada, you will want 0x1337xx, or > 0xdadaxx. That kind of diminishes the user friendliness of mnemonics. > > On the other hand, I am not sure that mnemonics are more collision prone > than values picked by bad number generators. "Use a random generator" is > likely to end up with python scripts like: > > import sys > import random > > random.seed(sys.argv[1]) > print(hex(random.randrange(64,0x100000))) > > That's not exactly collision proof either... > > -- Christian Huitema > > > > > David > > On Tue, Oct 18, 2022 at 2:28 AM Michael Eriksson <michael.eriksson= > [email protected]> wrote: > >> On Tue, Oct 18, 2022 at 11:13:24 +1100, Martin Thomson wrote: >> > I see this in the draft: >> > >> > "TBD - experiments use 0xadda" >> > >> > I find it hard to believe that this value was chosen at random. >> > Please consult a random number generator for these values. And - >> > while you are developing proposals - larger values might be more >> > appropriate. >> >> That was a pretty nitpicky comment... Have you read >> draft-ietf-quic-multipath? The 0xbabaXX constants don't look very >> random if you consider the affiliation of the first authors. >> >> Also, what is a "large" value? 0xadda is big enough to require a >> 32-bit VarInt. >> >> /me >> >
