All these discussions about different ways to code time into the serial makes me want to point out that no such local convention is written in stone. You can change your policy/scheme anytime you want, and as many times you want. Speculating about potentional future issues is meaningless.
Use whatever scheme you find useful *today*. (the OP pointed out some real bugs though - but those are in monitoring systems, not in BIND or the protocol) Bjørn -- Visit https://lists.isc.org/mailman/listinfo/bind-users to unsubscribe from this list.
