---
title: "What does \"BITWS\" mean?"
slug: "aa-00547"
description: "\"Bump in the wire signing,\" or the serial number of the unsigned version of a zone."
updated: 2018-10-16T14:38:12Z
published: 2018-10-16T14:38:12Z
canonical: "kb.isc.org/aa-00547"
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://kb.isc.org/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# 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).