Meaning – The term host byte order, refers to the byte order that a central processing unit (CPU) uses to store and process data. This byte order can be big-endian or little-endian, depending on the particular CPU.
Since computers using different byte ordering, and exchanging data, have to operate correctly on data, the convention is to always send data on the network in big-endian format. We call this network-byte ordering. The ordering used on a computer is called host-byte ordering.
Host Byte Order refers to how bytes are arranged when referring to the computer architecture of a host computing platform. Due to the pervasiveness of the Intel architecture, this is generally Little Endian Which means the least significant byte in the smallest address in a word.
Example of usage – “Big-endian is how we normally deal with numbers: the most significant byte or digits are placed leftmost in the structure (the big end). Known as the “network byte order,” the TCP/IP Internet protocol also uses big-endian regardless of the hardware at either end.”
