We said that endianness will not affect your program performance or correctness so long as the use of a (high level) data structure is commensurate with its declaration. Are there situations where even if your program does not violate the above rule, you could be bitten by the endianness of the architecture? [Hint: Think of programs that cross network boundaries.]

What will be an ideal response?

Yes, if data from a big-endian computer were transferred over a network to a small endian computer data corruption could occur. However, this problem has largely been solved with the Internet and networks which use similar technology. The solution is for networks to use a standard endianness. If the endianness of the network is different from the host computer, the host’s network interface will apply the appropriate conversion.