Serial Number Arithmetic
Serial numbers are often used in network protocols. However, most sequence numbers in computer protocols are limited to a fixed number of bits, and will wrap around after a sufficiently many numbers have been allocated. Thus, recently-allocated serial numbers may duplicate very old serial numbers, but not other recently-allocated serial numbers. To avoid ambiguity with these non-unique numbers, RFC 1982, "Serial Number Arithmetic" defines special rules for calculations involving these kinds of serial numbers.
Lollipop sequence number spaces are a more recent and sophisticated scheme for dealing with finite-sized sequence numbers in protocols.
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Famous quotes containing the words serial number, serial, number and/or arithmetic:
“The serial number of a human specimen is the face, that accidental and unrepeatable combination of features. It reflects neither character nor soul, nor what we call the self. The face is only the serial number of a specimen.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
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Pain, expiation, delight, more pain,
A frieze that lengthens continually, in the lucky way
Friezes do, and no plot is produced,
Nothing you could hang an identifying question on.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)
“I hope I may claim in the present work to have made it probable that the laws of arithmetic are analytic judgments and consequently a priori. Arithmetic thus becomes simply a development of logic, and every proposition of arithmetic a law of logic, albeit a derivative one. To apply arithmetic in the physical sciences is to bring logic to bear on observed facts; calculation becomes deduction.”
—Gottlob Frege (1848–1925)