Re: ISSUE: Checkgroups control messages

Hi Thorfinn,

>>> 640kb should be enough for anyone. Um. :-)

"I have to say in 1981 making those decisions I felt like I was providing
enough freedom for ten years, that is the move from 64k to 640k felt like
something that would last a great deal of time." (said in 1989 by Bill Gates)

"It [640K] was ten times what we had before.  But to my surprise, we ran out
of that address base for applications within - oh five or six years people
were complaining." (said in 1993 by Bill Gates)



> Looking at the current USEPRO text... *ponder* Serial number MUST  increase.  That is definitely a problem - you certainly can run 
> out of  32 bit integer.  It's not all that likely, but it's certainly possible.

That is why I also suggested a mechanism (yet to be defined) to *reset*
the counter.  But the main problem is that it will cause problems to
a news server which does not receive the message of reset...
So it is maybe a bad idea.



> I'd be uncomfortable putting in a 32 bit limit unless we also change  the text to deal with serial comparison in the same way that 
> DNS  serial numbers are compared.
>
> From RFC 1035:
> SERIAL The unsigned 32 bit version number of the original copy of the  zone. Zone transfers preserve this value. This value wraps 
> and should  be compared using sequence space arithmetic.

I reckon it is the best solution to adopt.
Say that there is a 32 bit limit and that serial numbers SHOULD be used
in case the checkgroups sender does not want to run out of available numbers.
It is up to him if he does not want to use serial numbers.

-- 
Julien ÉLIE

« -- C'est une bonne situation ça, scribe ?
  -- Oh, c'est une situation assise. » (Astérix)