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From: gdmr@dcs.ed.ac.uk (George Ross)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains
Subject: Re: decimals in the serial field
Message-ID: <12670@skye.cs.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 17 Jun 91 09:35:10 GMT
References: <1991Jun13.200755.28127@casbah.acns.nwu.edu> <9106141643.AA26522@gaak.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Sender: nnews@cs.ed.ac.uk
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Organization: Department of Computer Science, Edinburgh University
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In article <9106141643.AA26522@gaak.LCS.MIT.EDU>, MAP@LCS.MIT.EDU (Michael A. Patton) writes:
> I now understand what got Don Cox, he probably "increased" the serial
> from 31.xx (where xx was greater than 9), to 32.1 assuming the natural
> interpretation.  Unfortunately, according to bind 32.1 << 31.11 so it
> doesn't think the serial increased.

Actually, he may have "increased" it from nnnnn.9 to nnnnn.10 and tripped
over an overflow.  The pre-overflow results would have been nnnnn0009 and
nnnnn00010.

> it DOES NOT WORK except under some specific circumstances that the
> implementer had in mind.

Looks to me like it's just plain broken.  It could have been a good idea --
having explicit major and minor versions could cue the less sophisticated,
thereby avoiding mistakes.  Quite apart from the implementation being
wrong, though, it rapidly runs into overflow problems.
-- 
George D M Ross, Department of Computer Science, University of Edinburgh
     Kings Buildings, Mayfield Road, Edinburgh, Scotland, EH9 3JZ
Tel: 031-650 5147   Internet: gdmr@dcs.ed.ac.uk   JANET: gdmr@uk.ac.ed.dcs