Subj : Nodelist Phone Field (consistency?)
To   : Ozz Nixon
From : andrew clarke
Date : Thu Jun 21 2018 12:55 am

19 Jun 18 21:05, you wrote to all:

 ON>    I am not sure whom I should be addressing with this
 ON> suggestion/question. Nick sent me here, so my question:

 ON>    Instead of using -Unpublished- for the phone field for a lot of the
 ON> unlist or TCP based systems, and in other zones we are using
 ON> 000-0-0-0-0, why not use 000-0-0-0-0 for both 000-0-0-0-0 and
 ON> -Unpublished-? Since we (Fido) have always been about optmization and
 ON> small as possible node list lines ... this proposal would save us 2
 ON> bytes on every line currently yielding -Unpublished-. This weeks node
 ON> list has 1024 -Unpublished- enrties, this switch would literally shrink
 ON> the uncompressed nodelist by 2kb.

You propose to:

- potentially break existing software for the few remaining dialup nodes
- to save a measly 2 KB (1%) of a 154 KB nodelist
- of a nodelist that is naturally shrinking anyway (50 fewer FidoNet nodes 
since January)
- for network where the cost of data has mostly been unimportant for more than 
15 years

I think you may be barking up the wrong tree here.

--- GoldED+/BSD 1.1.5-b20170303
 * Origin: Blizzard of Ozz, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia (3:633/267)

.