Alternatives to UUIDs as network identifiers

Entwicklung / Development Maschinenraum / Machine room
1

Introduction

To shorten the user/network identifier (beekeeper id) currently based on a 36 character UUID, we might choose the ULID, an universally-unique lexicographically-sortable identifier encoded as a 26 character string. On top of that, ULIDs have some other nice properties, enjoy reading its specification.

Example

01AN4Z07BY79KA1307SR9X4MV3

Anatomy

 01AN4Z07BY      79KA1307SR9X4MV3
|----------|    |----------------|
 Timestamp           Entropy
  10 chars           16 chars
   48bits             80bits
   base32             base32

References


2

There are definitively other ways to create good unique identifiers. From that list, we found ULIDs to have the most convenient properties, followed by sonyflake.

Package Id Format
github.com/segmentio/ksuid 0pPKHjWprnVxGH7dEsAoXX2YQvU 4 bytes of time (seconds) + 16 random bytes
github.com/rs/xid b50vl5e54p1000fo3gh0 4 bytes of time (seconds) + 3 byte machine id + 2 byte process id + 3 bytes random
github.com/kjk/betterguid -Kmdih_fs4ZZccpx2Hl1 8 bytes of time (milliseconds) + 9 random bytes
github.com/sony/sonyflake 20f8707d6000108 ~6 bytes of time (10 ms) + 1 byte sequence + 2 bytes machine id
github.com/oklog/ulid 01BJMVNPBBZC3E36FJTGVF0C4S 6 bytes of time (milliseconds) + 8 bytes random
github.com/chilts/sid 1JADkqpWxPx-4qaWY47~FqI 8 bytes of time (ns) + 8 random bytes
github.com/satori/go.uuid 5b52d72c-82b3-4f8e-beb5-437a974842c UUIDv4 from RFC 4112 for comparison

– via: Generating good unique ids in Go

3

To produce even shorter and more convenient unique identifiers, i started leaning towards sonyflake. A Sonyflake ID is composed of

39 bits for time in units of 10 msec
16 bits for a machine id
 8 bits for a sequence number

This will reduce the space required for addressing a network of telemetry nodes (aka. network owner / beekeepers id) down to a 15 character string. Things like 20f8707d6000108 don’t spell bad either.

What’s your opinion about that?

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