ietf-nntp 32/64 bit question

[Russ Allbery]

Anton Chr Lauridsen <alauridsen at oppsol.com> writes:

> I am afraid that I am opening up an old debate, but considering that
> this protocol is going to live for quite some years into the future
> wouldn't it be appropriate to remove the 32 bit limitation on article
> numbers?

It's arguably out of scope for us, since this would be a significant
change to existing practice in an area that isn't covered by an extension
mechanism or standardizing behavior where it differs between different
implementations.  This point of the NNTP protocol is pretty much
universally implemented as described.

It's a somewhat ugly wart, but in practice, it doesn't really cause
problems.  (See Clive's message.)  I don't think it's worth worrying about
yet -- perhaps ever, since really only groups with automated traffic are
ever going to even approach those sorts of numbers in our lifetime, and in
most cases one can just use multiple groups instead.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra at stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>