• endianess is the order in which bytes are stored in memory
    • big-endian: the most significant byte is stored at the smallest memory address
      • Example: 0x12345678 is stored as 0x12 0x34 0x56 0x78
    • little-endian: the least significant byte is stored at the smallest memory address
      • Example: 0x12345678 is stored as 0x78 0x56 0x34 0x12