Articles

The Sad State of Today's Fidonet
Kent Anderson
1:382.92.6, kand@jump.net

For this week's Nodelist.014, statistics show that only 2,877 nodes remain in Zone 1, which comprises the USA and Canada. If we peer more deeply into the list, we find that there are nodes that are:

Administrative    37
Hosts            215
Hubs             268
Down              99
Pvt              183
Mail Only        390

This means that in the entire United States and Canada, there are only 1,685 nodes which appear to be BBS's serving users and providing BBS services. The number is dropping by forty to fifty nodes each week. If one considers that only three and a half years ago, there were over 17,000 Zone 1 Nodes, with a proportionate number being full BBS's, it presents a very sad picture for the devotee of echomail and other more local services provided by such systems.

The amount of echomail appearing in all echoes seems to drop each week as users are stranded with no point to pickup the messages.

'tis a sad, sad case and it does not appear to have any end except that which appears inevitable.

I surely hope that that band I hear in the background is not practising a funeral dirge.