Re: SSH in ECC Internet Draft

[Sam Hartman <hartmans-ietf%mit.edu@localhost>]

>>>>> "Markus" == Markus Friedl <markus%openssh.com@localhost> writes:

    Markus> On Thu, Oct 05, 2006 at 02:54:45PM -0400, Jon Green wrote:
    >> The data types boolean, uint32, uint64, string, and mpint are
    >> to be interpreted in this document as described in RFC 4251
    >> [1].
    >> 
    >> This document uses Abstract Syntax Notation (ASN.1) define some
    >> communication.  This is in keeping with current ECC standards.
    >> All ASN.1 variables are DER encoded before being sent.
    >> Information about the ASN.1 and DER can be found in ITU-T
    >> recommendation X.680 [7] and ITU-T recommendation X.690 [8].

    Markus> is it really necessary to use ASN.1 encoding?  this is
    Markus> rather scary and does not fit well into the data type
    Markus> scheme defined in RFC 4251.


I think you should look at how this will likely work in common
implementations.  If your ECC library is likely to want to take ASN.1
parameters as input, then that's probably how you want to transport
them.

Certainly there are a lot of IETF protocols that use ASN.1; ASN.1 is
complex but sometimes that complexity is necessary.

--Sam