Re: In the future..  
    By: August Abolins to All on Sun May 31 2020 11:39 am  
    
   AA> The internet has effectively depricated the need for dialup which FTN  
  was  
   AA> originally based upon. The nodelist still has a placeholder for a  
   AA> phonenumber that is only configured for a handful of systems.  When is  
  it  
   AA> time to abandon that field for something else?  
    
  Well, what happens when something else is in that field? I suspect nothing,  
  because it can either be numerical (a phone number), an IP address (I've  
  seen  
  some implementations like this - prefixed with 000- IIRC), or text  
  "-Unpublished-" as is used in some cases.  
    
  So while the major method of automated connectivity between systems (with a  
  mailer) has changed from phone to IP, a logical replacement for that field  
  would be the nodes hostname (retiring the need for INA:). (Saving 4 chars  
  plus  
  the length of whatever was in that field preivously.)  
    
  If a hostname was used, a phone number, an IP address or "Unpublished" could  
  still be used, where systems wanted that to be their preferred method of  
  automated connectivity from other systems. However, I guess, any nodelist  
  compilers that were specifically looking for the text "-Unpublished-" or  
  numbers may have a problem that is unfixable.  
    
  ...ÇÇÇÇ  
    
  ... If people don't want to come to the ball park, nobody's going to stop  
  them  
  --- SBBSecho 3.11-Linux  
   * Origin: I'm playing with ANSI+videotex - wanna play too? (3:633/509)