DNS - Year 2043 apocalypse ;-)

[Alex Miller]

Ok, kidding aside I've come up with an interesting
problem with serial numbers.

Let's say I decide to use the convention
YYYYMMDDHHSS for serial dates. So a dns change made
right now (as I'm writing) would be 200001061133
(2000, January 6, 11:33 EST), because my primary
dns server is on the East Coast.
I make lot's of typos so needing to distinguish
between one update and another a few minutes later
is important to me.

Well, that doesn't work too well, because the number
is too large "as a number" and when you query the zone
record it looks nothing like the YYYYMMDDHHSS.
Of course, unlike the tantalyzing subject of this
message such a transformation is hardly apocalyptic,
so beat me.

Anyway, instead I adopt the convention:
YYMMDDHHSS

The datetime/serial number would be
0001061146 

This works ok, when I do a dig on a domain
with a datetime/serial in that format it looks
like I would expect, pretty much.
It would look like 1061146. Not as nice as I'd
like but close enough.

On Jan, 1 2010, the stripping of the leading
zeros will end, oh joyful day.
That datetime/serial will read
1001010000 at the stroke of midnight EST
or whereever the primary server happens
to be.

But that happy time will be shortlived.
The last date which will "look good" will
be 4212312359 (2042, December 31, 23:59)

One minute later the leading 42 will become
a leading 43 which will topple the number
over the max size of the serial numbers.
4301010000 will yield 6042704

And then the tidal wave in upstate NY due
to global warming ... ;-)

Alex Miller