14 Mar
2022
14 Mar
'22
7:18 p.m.
On 3/14/22 11:44, Nick Mathewson wrote:
<snip>
Currently Tor relays use a 4-byte timestamp (in seconds since the Unix epoch) in their NETINFO cells. Notoriously, such a timestamp will overflow on 19 January 2038.
Let's get ahead of the problem and squash this issue now, by expanding the timestamp to 8 bytes. (8 bytes worth of seconds will be long enough to outlast the Earth's sun.)
<snip>
With all those extra bits, would there be any value to using a more granular time measure? e.g. microseconds?
If not, would it be worth saving some bytes and only expanding to 5 bytes? (I know; it *feels* wrong, but I can't think of much real downside)