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Printable Version: RFC2626.PDF
Network Working Group P. Nesser II
Request for Comments: 2626 Nesser & Nesser Consulting
Category: Informational June 1999
The Internet and the Millennium Problem (Year 2000)
Status of this Memo
This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does
not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this
memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1999). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
The Year 2000 Working Group (WG) has conducted an investigation into
the millennium problem as it regards Internet related protocols.
This investigation only targeted the protocols as documented in the
Request For Comments Series (RFCs). This investigation discovered
little reason for concern with regards to the functionality of the
protocols. A few minor cases of older implementations still using
two digit years (ala RFC 850) were discovered, but almost all
Internet protocols were given a clean bill of health. Several cases
of "period" problems were discovered, where a time field would "roll
over" as the size of field was reached. In particular, there are
several protocols, which have 32 bit, signed integer representations
of the number of seconds since January 1, 1970 which will turn
negative at Tue Jan 19 03:14:07 GMT 2038. Areas whose protocols will
be effected by such problems have been notified so that new revisions
will remove this limitation.
1. Introduction
According to the trade press billions of dollars will be spend the
upcoming years on the year 2000 problem, also called the millennium
problem (though the third millennium will really start in 2001). This
problem consists of the fact that many software packages and some
protocols use a two-digit field for the year in a date field. Most of
the problems seem to be in administrative and financial programs, or
in the hardcoded microcomputers found in electronic equipment. A lot
of organizations are now starting to make an inventory of which
software and tools they use will suffer from the millennium problem.
Nesser Informational [Page 1]