Table 4 presents the dominant policies used in each country for
insuring that serial (version) numbers are always growing. We can find three strategies for
serial number management: only incremental, starting with 1 and incrementing
1 by 1; in dotted decimal notation, i.e., the serial number is in the following
format: Release.Version (for example 1.01); and date codification
(with several variants: using 2 or 4
digits on the letf side for the year, and using 0 or more digits on the right
side for the version in the same day).
Table 4:
Policies used in the serial number make up (1992, April the 14th)
|
Only |
Dotted |
Date |
|
incremental |
decimal |
codification |
AT |
many |
few |
few |
BE |
none |
few |
many1 |
BG |
none |
all |
none |
CH |
many |
some |
few |
CS |
some |
some |
some |
DE |
some |
some |
many2 |
DK |
few |
some |
many |
ES |
few |
none |
many3 |
FI |
few |
few |
many4 |
FR |
few |
few |
many5 |
GR |
some |
many |
none |
HU |
none |
some |
some |
IE |
some |
none |
some |
IL |
some |
few |
none |
IS |
none |
none |
all6 |
IT |
some |
few |
many7 |
NL |
some |
some |
many |
NO |
few |
many8 |
few |
PL |
few |
few |
many9 |
PT |
some |
none |
many |
SE |
few |
few |
many10 |
SU |
none |
all |
none |
TN |
none |
all |
none |
UK |
few |
few |
many11 |
YU |
all |
none |
none |
|
- The format most used is YYMMDDV.
- Several different formats are used and there are some zones that join the number 53 (port of domain service) at the left of the date format.
- Almost all use the format YYMMDDVVV.
- The format most used is YYYYMMDDVV.
- The following two formats: YYMMDDVV and YYMMDDV, are the most used ones.
- All zones use the format YYYYMMDDVV.
- The format most used is YYMMDD.
- There are many serial numbers with six zeros between the number and the version (ex. 100000015).
- The format most used is YYMMDDVV.
- The format most used is YYYYMMDDVV.
- The format most used is YYYYMMDVVV.
|
There were some administrators that seemed to follow no
apparent heuristic, at least at first sight, like the following examples:
2147483647 in ``iiasa.ac.at'', 587000483 in ``epfl.ch'', etc.
The main reasons causing a regression of the
serial number, we have caught, are:
- Change of the management strategy of the serial number.
- Wrong usage of a date to generate a serial number. There are two kinds of such
errors: using the
date in an incorrect order (50392 – ``ariadne-t.gr'', 150192 –
``hitec.ariadne-t.gr'', 40292 – ``nrcps.ariadne-t.gr'' all these serial
numbers have been apparently generated using a date in inverse order, DDMMYY);
another situation also very frequent is the usage of one only digit when the day or month is
lower than 10, like the serial number of ``c3consult.comm.se'', 199112501.
- Bad manipulation of the serial numbers in dotted decimal notation.
For example if a serial number
with value 1.31 would be updated to a value like 1.4, this would cause a
regression, because the dot is replaced with 3 zeros by the bind server.
(the value 10004 is lower than 100031).
We also found some zones with a negative serial number.