Forum outage resolved

[The Blaatschapen]

Sorry, I'm confused.

how exactly can a forum 'run out of posts'????

I thought that a forum would be designed to take as many posts as the servers could store?

Every post is assigned a number. Our numbers were 24 bits long. So when we ran out of posts, what happened was that the database tried to assign a number to a post, that was longer than 24 bits. Which was not possible.

Now we've upgraded our post numbers to 32 bits and we're safe for a long time.

[Great Nepal]

Sorry, I'm confused.
how exactly can a forum 'run out of posts'????
I thought that a forum would be designed to take as many posts as the servers could store?

Just like internet ran out of IP addresses a while back. Everything posted needs a number (or in internet's case every device needed a IP address), you run out of that and you can't post any more.

Every post is assigned a number. Our numbers were 24 bits long. So when we ran out of posts, what happened was that the database tried to assign a number to a post, that was longer than 24 bits. Which was not possible.
Now we've upgraded our post numbers to 32 bits and we're safe for a long time.

Not if NS grows exponentially with no asymptote. You will run out in another four(ish) years...

[The Blaatschapen]

Sorry, I'm confused.
how exactly can a forum 'run out of posts'????
I thought that a forum would be designed to take as many posts as the servers could store?

Just like internet ran out of IP addresses a while back. Everything posted needs a number (or in internet's case every device needed a IP address), you run out of that and you can't post any more.

Every post is assigned a number. Our numbers were 24 bits long. So when we ran out of posts, what happened was that the database tried to assign a number to a post, that was longer than 24 bits. Which was not possible.
Now we've upgraded our post numbers to 32 bits and we're safe for a long time.

Not if NS grows exponentially with no asymptote. You will run out in another four(ish) years...

It doesn't. It hasn't done that in years.

Why do people keep bringing that up?

[Great Nepal]

It doesn't. It hasn't done that in years.
Why do people keep bringing that up?

Because we want to cause panic among people who didn't read mods previous post?

[Hajuche]

That explains why this was so bloody annoying.

[Purpelia]

Just to put things in perspective for you. The largest 24 bit number is 2²⁴-1 or 16'777'215. By comparison the largest 32 bit number is 2³² - 1 or 4'294'967'295. The latter is 256 times larger than the former. I think we are safe for a few years to come.