[NNTP] 64-bit article numbers

[Chris Caputo]

On Mon, 15 Aug 2005, Chris Caputo wrote:
> On my site two groups have now passed the 200 million mark.  The highest 
> numbered group was created in late 2000, so it is averaging in excess of 
> 40 million posts per year.
> 
> But more revealing is this...  if I take the highest volume group for a given
> month the chart looks like this:
> 
> Month	Articles/day on average in busiest group
> 01/1998	10153
> 01/1999	19146
> 01/2000	91473
> 01/2001	124107
> 01/2002	102270
> 01/2003	84421
> 01/2004	218261
> 01/2005	360728
[...]

For the curious, here's an update almost 2 years later:

Month	Articles/day on average in busiest group
01/2006	781458
01/2007	1330775
02/2007	1305487
03/2007	1416877
04/2007	1245912
05/2007	1249346
06/2007	1357305
07/2007 1597852 (so far)

Also, here are the top 10 highmarks in our active file:

0186679261
0204900193
0212251091
0225229488
0246431279
0288952119
0312144231
0401390671
0613558761
0886498205

At current rates, 2^31 will be reached in a little over 2 years and 2^32 
will be hit after 5 years.

If post volume in the highest volume group continues to increase, as it 
has done by 20% in the last 6 months, these time frames may shrink 
considerably.

Chris