Which way do I read this, again?

What this endianness interview question tests

This is an easy networking fundamentals question that probes whether you understand byte order and how multi-byte integers are laid out in memory. It is a practical concern for anyone working with network protocols, low-level systems code, or financial data feeds where byte-level correctness matters.

To answer questions like this, you need to recognize the relationship between a numeric value, its hexadecimal representation, and the sequence of bytes as they appear in memory. The question hinges on knowing the two common conventions for byte ordering and being able to reason backwards from a memory dump to identify which one your system uses.

• Big-endian vs. little-endian byte order
• Hexadecimal representation of integers
• Reading memory layouts
• Network byte order conventions