@rheaplex @gentoobro @lispi314 variable length identifiers are what CRDTs use now. it does complicate some stuff. old formats were built in the age of everything-is-a-db-record.

in the case of network protocols a "i ran out of handles—negociate restart" is fine. what happens now is basically undefined behavior (likely it will just wrap because thats what the machine code does, but you are supposed to track those so if it wraps back to 1 it would be interpreted as trying to send outdated packets)