Editing FidoNet (section)

===Zones and points===
The evolution towards the net/node addressing scheme was also useful for reducing communications costs between continents, where time zone differences on either end of the connection might also come into play. For instance, the best time to forward mail in the US was at night, but that might not be the best time for European hosts to exchange. Efforts towards introducing a continental level to the addressing system started in 1986.<ref name=randy/>

At the same time, it was noted that some [[power user]]s were interested in using FidoNet protocols as a way of delivering the large quantities of echomail to their local machines where it could be read offline. These users did not want their systems to appear in the nodelist - they did not (necessarily) run a bulletin board system and were not publicly accessible.<ref name=randy/> A mechanism allowing netmail delivery to these systems without the overhead of nodelist maintenance was desirable.

In October 1986 the last major change to the FidoNet network was released, adding ''zones'' and ''points''. Zones represented major geographical areas roughly corresponding to continents. There were six zones in total, North America, South America, Europe, Oceania, Asia, and Africa. Points represented non-public nodes, which were created privately on a host BBS system. Point mail was delivered to a selected host as if it was addressed to a user on that machine, but then re-packaged into a packet for the point to pick up on-demand. The complete addressing format was now <code>zone:net/node.point</code>, so a real example might be <code>Bob Smith@1:250/250.10</code>.<ref name=randy/> Points were widely used only for a short time, the introduction of [[offline reader]] systems filled this role with systems that were much easier to use. Points remain in use to this day but are less popular than when they were introduced.