3 ms·
More precisely: to avoid collisions with high probability, random IDs need to be twice the size of sequential IDs for a fixed number of IDs generated, thanks to
by senderista 8y ago
More precisely: to avoid collisions with high probability, random IDs need to be twice the size of sequential IDs for a fixed number of IDs generated, thanks to the birthday problem. You don’t need to “hope for the best”; the probabilities in question can be precisely quantified: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem.
- dragonwriter 8y agoYou still need to hope for the best because probabilities that aren't zero or one aren't a guarantee of anything except for the asymptotic limit of frequency as the number of trials approaches infinity. If your system isn't resilient to collisions (and distributed ID schemes are usually the chosen to enable a system which isn't), you are gambling. Perhaps with very good odds, but gambling.