big-endian

English

Etymology

See the etymology for endian.

Adjective

big-endian (not comparable)

1. (computing) Storing the most significant byte of a multibyte number at a lower address than the least significant byte; that is, "big end" first.
   • 1999, W. Curtis Preston, Unix Backup and Recovery, O'Reilly Media, →ISBN, page 132:

     Most big Unix machines are big-endian, but Intel x86 machines and older Digital machines are little-endian.

2. (networking) Transmitting the most significant byte of a multibyte number before transmitting the least significant byte; that is, "big end" first.
   • 1994, James Martin, Joe Leben, TCP/IP Networking: Architecture, Administration, and Programming, Prentice Hall, page 203:

     The network octet order for all protocols in the TCP/IP protocol suite is big-endian. A big-endian computer system need not perform any conversion in building TCP/IP protocol headers from integers stored in its memory.

Synonyms

• network byte-order

Antonyms

• little-endian

Related terms

• endianness
• endianless

Translations

computing: storing the most significant byte at a lower address

• Esperanto: pezkomenca

Further reading

• Endianness on Wikipedia.Wikipedia