WHAT IS FIDONET? Far back in the mists of ancient time, in the great and glorious days of CP/M and Commodore 64's, life was wild, rich and largely tax free. In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. It was in those days that a brave young pioneer called Tom Jennings named a random group of bytes, which by an entirely meaningless coincidence actually did something, after his pet dog Fido. The random group of bytes, when inserted into a certain piece of machinery called a PC, allowed carbon-based bipedal life-forms who had just discovered the basics of datacommunications (henceforth known as Users) to spend hours and hours reading bulletins, posting and reading messages and - best of all - sending and receiving other random groups of bytes they called files. The users chose to call all this a Bulletin Board System. Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God. The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing." "But," says Man, "the BBS is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED." "Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes into a puff of logic. "Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing. In the meantime Fido was feeling rather lonely. So TJ thought it would be a pretty neat idea if he added some more random bytes to his Fido program which automatically talked to other Fido's. And that's how FidoNet was created. PRACTICAL, PLEASE... Oh, you don't like fun manuals? Guess I'd better explain it differently then... FidoNet links more than 6000 (!) Bulletin Boards world-wide. It defines a standard way of transferring messages, files and other random groups of bytes (oops, sorry) between these boards. Messages on a BBS which is connected FidoNet can be split up into three groups: ¯ Local Mail: these messages don't go anywhere. ¯ Network Mail or NetMail: these messages are sent to one other BBS which is the user specifies. ¯ EchoMail: these messages are sent to all other boards in FidoNet who wish to receive them. NetMail is normally used for person-to-person mail. If - for instance - you have a friend on the other side of the world who calls a FidoNet-BBS there, you can send him messages. The message is sent to that board only (although it may be routed, but we'll keep that for later). EchoMail is divided up into a whole lot of different topics (areas). There are EchoMail areas for animal lovers, cooks, Basic programmers and dentists, to name but a few. Some EchoMail areas are national (e.g. German), some are continental (e.g. European). There are quite a few world-wide areas too. By posting a message in an EchoMail area it can be read on each and every BBS which carries that area. Any problem you wish to pose is usually answered within days, if not hours. You, the SysOp, can choose from a wide selection of different topics. FIDONET ORGANISATION In the following section I will explain how FidoNet is organised. At least, what the theory behind the organisation is. In practice the organisation differs on quite a few points. Of course it would be stupid, impossible in fact, to call each connected BBS when one of your users has entered a message in an EchoMail area. It would also be silly if ten boards sent their own mail to the other side of the world. It would be much cheaper if just one BBS gathered the mail and sent it all at once. The organisation of FidoNet can be viewed in two different ways: the topographic organisation and the structural or hierarchical organisation. The topographic organisation can be seen in figure 5.1. The whole world is divided into a number of different Zones. Zone 1 is America, zone 2 is Europe and zone 3 is Australia/Asia. There aren't many connections in Africa, so it is included in zone 2. Each zone is subdivided into Regions. The regions don't have any effect on the structural organisation, and are usually disregarded. Each region contains Networks. A network is generally a group of boards located in the same geographic area, to cut down phone costs. The actual Bulletin Boards are called Nodes. When you look at the structural organisation (figure 5.2) you will see that each zone has a sort of tree shape. Right up at the top of the tree (or at the root, if you like) we have a ZoneGate. The ZoneGate takes care of all inter-zone mail. It calls other ZoneGates in other zones when mail must be transferred from one zone to another. So you could say that the ZoneGate is head of the zone. At the head of each network we have a Host. The host takes care of inter-network mail. If a node sends a message to a node in a different network, it goes via the host. In some large networks Hubs are used. Some networks have hundreds of nodes. One single host couldn't handle that many calls, so hubs are introduced. They act as a host for a group of nodes. Right down at the bottom of the tree you'll see the nodes themselves. By the way, a zonegate, host or hub is a node too! Each node has a number, the host is usually just node number 0. As I stated earlier, this is how it works in theory. To speed things up a bit, some hosts call inter-zone themselves. And a node often sends mail for another network to the host of that other network. For EchoMail an EchoMail Backbone is used. It transfers the EchoMail between the hosts (generally all hosts in one region), and to and from other regions. NETWORK ADDRESSES Every BBS in the network has its own address which has the following format: zone:net/node where 'zone' is the zone number, 'net' is the network number and 'node' is the node number. Our Support BBS (zone 2, network 282, node 301) has address 2:282/301 Hosts are normally node 0 in a network. So, the host of network 282 would have address 2:282/0 This address is unique for each node in FidoNet. No two nodes have the same address. If you don't yet have an address you should ask your Regional Coordinator or a local Host for information about getting one. POINTS A fairly new part of FidoNet is the point. A point is one level lower than a node. It's really just a sort of super-user who doesn't log into your BBS to read his mail, but uses a mailer to collect it and read it at home, offline. Before you start promising people all sorts of things you should have your board running in FidoNet without major problems for a few months. QuickBBS doesn't need to know anything about points. They are just extra nodes, as far as Quick is concerned. Points have a different format address, with an extra number at the end. The first three numbers are generally the same as their boss (the node which sends them mail). The last number is their point number. So a point of our Support BBS might have address 2:282/301.4 WHAT'S A MAILER? A mailer is a program which handles all the mail transfers from one node to another. It sits 'in front' of QuickBBS and waits for the phone to ring. If there's a user at the other end it starts up QuickBBS. If the other end is a mailer it may send or receive some mail. At the moment there are two mailers available for the ST: The-Box and Binkley/ST. Both are PD/Shareware, downloadable from the Support BBS. It's not up to me to tell you which mailer you should use. Both mailers have their positive and negative sides. The-Box is a very reliable and flexible mailer, but the user interface is practically non-existent. Binkley on the other hand looks very pretty, but isn't as stable or as powerful as The-Box. It's up to you to decide what you think is more important. Example configuration files given here are for The-Box. Binkley uses similar methods though. WRITING NETMAIL When you write a NetMail message in QuickBBS you will have to enter the address of the node where the message should be sent. This is done in the NodeList Menu. If you know the address you can just type it in. If you don't, use the list or search options to find out. To send NetMail you must have credit. The amount of credit a user has can be changed in UserEdit. When a message is sent the cost of the message is subtracted from the users credit. In the XLTLST control file you can specify what a message will cost, based on the phone number (area code) of the destination node. READING AND WRITING ECHOMAIL EchoMail is fairly transparent to the user. Writing an EchoMail message is the same as writing a message in a local area. When reading EchoMail you will notice a few extra lines at the bottom of the message. The line beginning with '---' is the Tear Line. It identifies the program which was used to write the message. The line beginning with '* Origin' is the Origin Line. This identifies the BBS from which the message was sent. It is followed by the address of the node. The origin line which is added by QuickBBS can be defined in MConfig. Each area can have a different origin line. You should always put at least the name of your BBS in the origin line. If possible, put the phone number in too. Don't include your address, it will be added by Quick. (Entnommen aus dem QuickBBS /ST manual, (c) by Jon Webb, Delta Vision Systems)