Instead of overloading getOutboundCount() with a magic sentinel value,
add a dedicated getOutboundTotal() method to the PacketManager interface
that returns the total queue size without time filtering.
This eliminates the fragile convention that caused the regression and
makes the two operations — time-filtered count vs total count —
explicitly separate in the API.
PR #1795 changed PacketQueue::countBefore() to use signed 2's complement
arithmetic for millis wraparound safety. However, this broke the
0xFFFFFFFF sentinel pattern used by callers to mean "count all packets
regardless of schedule".
With the signed comparison, countBefore(0xFFFFFFFF) always returns 0,
causing hasPendingWork() to report false and repeaters to sleep with
packets still queued. Stats reporting also shows queue_len as 0.
Add an early-return for the sentinel value before the loop, and document
the sentinel convention on the virtual interface and implementation.
PacketQueue::add() silently dropped packets when the queue was at
capacity. The packet pointer was lost — never enqueued, never returned
to the unused pool. Each occurrence permanently shrank the 32-packet
pool until allocNew() returned NULL and the node went deaf. Return bool
from add() and free the packet back to the pool on failure.
Daniel Novak