i think an implimentation that knew how to read the current
format, but, stored new information in a different format
would be OK.

eg, it could have a magic number, or anything.  the format
would include space for any measure of IP address and also
MAXHOSTNAMELEN chars for the hostname.

this would be worth doing after 1.2 has been shipped, imo.
i would probably be able to do this work then.

.mrg.