Editing FidoNet (section)

===Up and running===
By June 1984, Version 7 of the system was being run in production, and nodes were rapidly being added to the network. By August there were almost 30 systems in the nodelist, 50 by September, and over 160 by January 1985. As the network grew, the maintenance of the nodelist became prohibitive, and errors were common. In these cases, people would start receiving phone calls at 4 AM, from a caller that would say nothing and then hang up. In other cases the system would be listed before it was up and running, resulting in long-distance calls that accomplished nothing.<ref name=tom/>

In August 1984, Jennings handed off control of the nodelist to the group in St. Louis, mostly Ken Kaplan and Ben Baker. Kaplan had come across Fido as part of finding a BBS solution for his company, which worked with DEC computers and had been given a Rainbow computer and a [[USRobotics]] 1200bit/s [[modem]].<ref>Kaplan provides details 14 to 16-minute mark during this interview, [https://archive.org/details/20040126-bbs-kaplanbakerfrog1 "BBS Documentary Interview Collection: Ben Baker, Ken Kaplan, That Old Frog (Ryugen Fisher) Part 1 (2004)"]</ref> From then on, joining FidoNet required one to set up their system and use it to deliver a netmail message to a special system, Node 51. The message contained various required contact information. If this message was transmitted successfully, it ensured that at least some of the system was working properly. The nodelist team would then reply with another netmail message back to the system in question, containing the assigned node number. If delivery succeeded, the system was considered to be working properly, and it was added to the nodelist.<ref name=tom/> The first new nodelist was published on 21 September 1984.<ref name=baker/>