question about serial numbers

[Barry Margolin]

In article <19990626010513.C23044 at samurai.com>,
Bryan Fullerton  <bryanf at samurai.com> wrote:
>On Fri, Jun 25, 1999 at 09:36:38PM -0700, Bill Manning <bmanning at ISI.EDU> wrote:
>> 
>> 	Er, yes they are.  Serial numbers are not dates. 
>> 	A serial number is a signed integer.  Please see
>> 	RFC 1982 for details. Impuing a date on a signed
>> 	number is one way to help humans. DNS does not care.
>
>DNS does not care what format you use, but you will if you're using a
>serial number in the format YYMMDDN. A serial number which, for example,
>updates from 9912311 to 0001011 (which BIND sees as 1011) would probably
>be a bad thing.

Who says that the next serial number after 9912311 will be 0001011?  Maybe
it will be 10001011.  I.e. their scheme is actually <year-1900>MMDDN.  You
can't tell just by looking at their current serial numbers; you need to see
the script they're using to create their zone files, if any, or see into
the future to determine what they're planning on doing next year.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar at bbnplanet.com
GTE Internetworking, Powered by BBN, Burlington, MA
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