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> Once they hit their limit, do they start erasing the oldest ones? The most inactive ones? Let's do the math. If we assume that a service only uses a-z, A-Z a
by acangiano 16y ago
> Once they hit their limit, do they start erasing the oldest ones? The most inactive ones?
Let's do the math. If we assume that a service only uses a-z, A-Z and 0-9 as characters for the shortened URL, we have a set of 62 characters.
/x -> 62
/xx -> 62^2 = 3,844
/xxx -> 62^3 = 238,328
/xxxx -> 62^4 = 14,776,336
/xxxxx -> 62^5 = 916,132,832
/xxxxxx -> 62^6 = 56,800,235,584
In the worst case scenario, the URL shortener will have to use a 6 character identifier at some point, giving them a complessive coverage of almost 58 billion URLs.
The 4 characters they are currently using will only be enough for a while. They'll switch to 5 soon enough.
- jodrellblank 16y ago> The 4 characters they are currently using will only be enough for a while. They'll switch to 5 soon enough. Hmm... are they sequentially used? Bets on how soon?
- zacharycohn 16y ago56,800,235,584 URLs ought to be enough for anyone... :)
- toolate 16y agoIt seems like a bad idea to differentiate between upper and lowercase case to me. I imagine most people reading a URL aloud would not specify the case. Perhaps they have done some testing.
- brfox 16y agoI tired about 10 random ones and 3 were real links. So are they approx 30% full already of the 4 character urls? I guess you better not shorten a url to a page you don't want to be public, because then the address will be easy to guess.