Sometimes, they just aren't as understandable as the Fidonet Technical Standards Committee intended.
Lets start with the basics.
The nodelist has a specific format. You can't vary off that in some aspects or it will fail to process. That can cause a node, hub segment, net segment, region, or even a whole Zone to fail to process depending on where it fails. The first field of interest for a sysop with IP connectivity, is the 3rd one where the BBSname is traditionally entered. For an IP node, this is the 'system address' space.