What does 'BITWS' mean?

Question:

In BIND 9.9.0 pre-release versions, I'm seeing the serial number for my dynamic zone being reported by named-journalprint as BITWS=2011111502. What does BITWS mean?

Answer:

What is being reported by journalprint is the serial number of the unsigned version of the zone, as of the last time the signed version was updated from it.

BITWS is an abbreviation for bump in the wire signing, which is what ISC called this feature for a while. There are a few parts of the code that still use the term (but expect to see them disappear as they are updated).