dict.org / RFC229 dict protocol

A couple of times lately I've run across http://www.dict.org/ and the 
'dictionary server protocol' (DICT). It is TCP based, and seems to be 
getting some usage.  http://www.dict.org/rfc2229.txt

The page at http://www.dict.org/links.html links a number of client and 
server packages, and points to a (modest) number of live services. 

I wonder whether one of the DICT server packages, such as

	http://www.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/~duc/Java/JDictd/
	http://ktulu.com.ar/en/javadict.php (Java)

	http://www.miranda.org/~jkominek/jiten/ (Perl)
	http://melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk/~garabik/serpento/ (Python)
	http://www.caliban.org/ruby/ruby-dict.shtml (Ruby)

...could be used as basis for a Web service -based wrapper around
a SKOS SOAP service.

So a question for those of you hacking on the SKOS Web service
interfaces... do you think the SKOS API will allow for a superset of the 
functionality in the DICT protocol? 

Also, is DICT going to be _much_ faster through being TCP based? I
wonder if that matters, eg. if desktop clients will do multiple queries
per word using substring matching 'while you type', ...

Thoughts welcomed,

Dan