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From: phil@eecs.nwu.edu (William LeFebvre)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains
Subject: Re: decimals in the serial field
Message-ID: <1991Jun13.200755.28127@casbah.acns.nwu.edu>
Date: 13 Jun 91 20:07:55 GMT
References: <1991Jun13.161911.29541@ssd.kodak.com>
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Reply-To: phil@eecs.nwu.edu (William LeFebvre)
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Organization: Northwestern University
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In article <1991Jun13.161911.29541@ssd.kodak.com>, dcox@ssd.kodak.com (Don Cox ) writes:
|> SunOS4.1.1, Sun3/60, BIND 4.8.3
|> 
|> I have a primary nameserver and a secondary for ssd.kodak.com.
|> On the primary machine I have the following entry:
|> 
|> ssd.kodak.com.  IN      SOA     ispdgate.ssd.kodak.com. dcox.ssd.kodak.com. (
|>                         32.1  ; Serial
|> 
|> If I look at the file for ssd.kodak.com on the secondary I get:
|> 
|> ssd             IN      SOA     ispdgate.ssd.kodak.com. dcox.ssd.kodak.com. (
|>                 320001 1800 300 604800 3600 )

Believe it or not, in BIND "32.1" is the same as "320001".  The exact
interpretation of "." is "000".  Quite seriously (I looked at the code).

This means that 32.10 > 32.9 by a very significant margin:
32.10 == 3200010 and 32.9 == 320009, a order of magnitude difference.

I personally avoid using the "." notation for serial numbers.  It
it non-standard and as ill-defined (and IMHO, poor) semantics.

As for the rest of it:  I'm not sure why the transfers weren't taking
place.  But since it seems to work without the dot, I would advise
just leaving it that way.

		William LeFebvre
		Computing Facilities Manager and Analyst
		Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
		Northwestern University
		<phil@eecs.nwu.edu>