Not sure if 2024 is going to break the barrier or not, but soon we are coming up to the magic number 10000. FTC and Lego League has long broken this barrier, but this introduces new challenges for the FRC networking protocol and Driver Station software.
Is there a definitive plan at FIRST headquarters to address this, and will it impact all teams with respect to IP addresses and DS data?
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more numbers should really cause an issue I think it’s more of a question of does it go 10.###.##.2 or 10.##.###.2 although I will say it’ll break some of my old software but no more than a 10 minute fix.
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There are things is motion, New team signs to support 5 digit numbers for one.
FMS and the DS software will need to be updated, but that’s a minor change in the grand scheme of things.
The current IP address scheme will work until team 25599 (10.255.99.0)
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I’d think they have to choose 10.xxx.yy.2 since the max value in the 3rd octet is 255.
Also makes bumper numbers more challenging/expensive
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Are we back to vinyl coupons to level the costs?
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I’m more interested in team 9999. The lucky team that gets assigned that number is going to inherit a legacy dating back to 2009 (or 2004? That seems like an error since it’s an actual regional) of off-season participation and filling in during playoff matches.
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I don’t believe HQ will issue any numbers that are 999* . I think these numbers are technically already assigned as the off season placeholder numbers and will be for the rest of time.
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That’s my understanding as well. Worth noting that teams 9970 through 9999 are registered as off-season teams on FIRST’s side as well (it’s not just a TBA thing).
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IPv6 update when? 
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Based on the trend I observed of Team growth (not accounting what COVID did to the usual trend) it seems like we get on average 250-350 teams per year. If we are currently at 9300ish we have maybe 2+ years to go?
2022 TBA data wasnt working with my algorithm but every other year worked so idk what happened there. But this was a calculation of the number of registered teams per season. If they didn’t show up at an event they were counted if TBA didn’t remove them so take those numbers with some wiggle room
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A little off-topic
But a few things that have been on my mind about this topic is dead team numbers. Usually they are for reboot teams *ahem 4414… if we shift all teams down, then we don’t have to worry about it for a few more years! This is the worst idea, imagine all your branding going to waste. I liked our number!
Another thing is bumpers. Someone from another thread was talking about putting 0’s in front to level pricing out. EX. 0088, 0972, 3255 and then add a zero every time we go a digit bigger. That’s also a bad idea, it looks ugly… and for guests it might be harder to read. I really like the idea that @theworkshope has.
For context on that thread:
It wasn’t exactly a serious thread.
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We’ll just be issued April Tags for the bumpers. Refs get tag readers that the aim and automatically issue penalties.
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I really hope there is a popup add celebrating the 10000’th team offering them a free car!
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Also, they have been working the other problem. At our FTA’s request, we tested production-intent five-digit team number signs at SCRIW last year. I’m a fan. Only rolled back at lunch because of unrelated issues with the custom beta build of FMS we had to run to support it.
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They were also being tested at the official WPI event this year, though only for practice matches. (They didn’t run into any problems that I saw, they just wanted to have official matches use the standard ones all the other events used.)
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They used these at RoboCon in 2019 too.
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For those with experience in FTC and FLL, how are five digit numbers pronounced? We all know 1114 is pronounced “eleven fourteen”, but how do you say 11114?
Is it:
“One eleven fourteen”?
“Eleven one fourteen”?
“One one one one four”?
“Eleven thousand one hundred fourteen”?
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From my experience, that number would be pronounced one one one one four. That might just be an SC thing though, as announcing methods tend to vary by individual/region.
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This is going to be like Y2K all over again but this time it actually matters /s
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