> On Feb 23, 2026, at 4:34 PM, johnforecast--- via cctalk
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> ...
> The files on Jay’s disk images confirm that it is a phase III implementation
> targeted for an 11/23. The node address is 124 so that implies that it was
> part of a second release of phase III (the first phase III release only
> supported 32 network nodes, while the later one supported up to 256 nodes).
I don't remember two releases of Phase III. The only 32 node notion I can
think of was just a marketing restriction, created by people who didn't believe
routers could deal with a "big" network having 256 nodes. In any spec I ever
saw, the node address was an 8-bit value (though, amusingly, sent in a 16 bit
field -- which is why Phase IV interoperates with Phase III so easily).
Something similar happened in Phase IV, where marketing didn't believe in big
areas nor lots of areas. So we just built the Engineering Network with several
thousand nodes and eventually 63 area numbers (more than 63 actual areas, in
fact), and it just worked. Feh.
paul
