Subj : Weekly nodelist report on noteworthy changes (223)
To   : Ward Dossche
From : Michiel van der Vlist
Date : Sat Aug 12 2023 14:47:43

Hello Ward,

On Saturday August 12 2023 10:58, you wrote to me:

 Mv>> Note: NC250 reissues node numbers that were in use by someone else
 Mv>> not too long ago. This has side effects...

 WD> In days gone-by when Fidonet was still exploding and there was no
 WD> public internet, nodenumbers were recycled because "there is an end to
 WD> them" ...

In theory that is true of course. In practise itis a false argument. There can be 32767 nodes in a net. Reserving the first 100 net numbers for regions, there can be 32667 nets in a zone. Assuming 6 zones that is 6422397534 nodes. Over 6 milliard nodes. That is more that the IPv4 internet adderss space. If push came to shove we could have added more zones and even added 32767 points to each node.

With some 35000 nodes at maximum, and even if the total number of nodes that ever were active was three time that much, Fidonet never even came near node number exhaustion.

 WD> There were days in times gone-by when in nets there was a fight for
 WD> particular nodenumbers ... /1 being the NC, /100 being the one
 WD> maintaining the segment ... I know what you and Wilfred are going to
 WD> say ... just mentioning how it worked in certain places...

Just mentioning that there never was any real need for reusing node numbers and that it has some undesirable side effects..


Cheers, Michiel

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