The ability to build dirt-cheap networks over crappy phone lines
>and using some no-name PCs as message and packet routers was
>noticed, see for example: "Developing Networks in Less
>Industrialized Nations" by Larry Press
Heck, I even wrote my PhD dissertation (http://www.opus1.com/www/jms/diss.html) on it. And among the 848 references, this "Antonov" character (avg@hq.demos.su) even gets quoted three times (assuming you're not also V.S.Antonov who wrote "Interfacing Tasks of Systems SM and ES Computers and Ways of Their Solution" in 1983).
jms