Editing FidoNet (section)

===Peak===
FidoNet started in 1984 and listed 100 nodes by the end of that year. Steady growth continued through the 1980s, but a combination of factors led to rapid growth after 1988. These included faster and less expensive modems and rapidly declining costs of hard drives and computer systems in general. By April 1993, the FidoNet nodelist contained over 20,000 systems. At that time it was estimated that each node had, on average, about 200 active users. Of these 4 million users in total, 2 million users commonly used echomail, the shared public forums, while about 200,000 used the private netmail system.<ref name=randy/> At its peak, FidoNet listed approximately 39,000 systems.<ref name=tom/><ref group=N>The Jargon File puts it at [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/FidoNet 38,000] at its peak.</ref>

Throughout its lifetime, FidoNet was beset with management problems and infighting. Much of this can be traced to the fact that the inter-net delivery cost real money, and the traffic grew more rapidly than decreases caused by improving modem speeds and downward trending long-distance rates. As they increased, various methods of recouping the costs were attempted, all of which caused friction in the groups. The problems were so bad that Jennings came to refer to the system as the "fight-o-net".<ref>[http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fight-o-net "fight-o-net"], Jargon File, 4 November 1996</ref>