ietf-nntp 32/64 bit question

[Clive D.W. Feather]

Anton Chr. Lauridsen said:
> I realize that requiring all news readers to be able to support 64 bit
> article numbers is a tall order, and a means to enable slow migration
> might be in order, but if this is not the time to start this transition,
> one may wonder when it will be. A simple solution may be to allocate
> response codes 203 and 204 as welcome messages for servers that use 64
> bit integers as article numbers, this way a client can tell if it may
> run into trouble.

The way to do it is for you to define a BIGNUM extension. Then a server can
respond

    401 BIGNUM Article numbers exceed 2**32

any time the issue comes up and the client hasn't indicated it can handle
big numbers.

[See, Russ, I *told* you there'd be other hoops.]

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