fidonet
FidoNet is an inter-connecting file and message transport system that was used by bulletin board systems. The network still exists today, but is dwindling in size and organization, due to the lack of callers to BBS systems that it was developed to serve, and the closing of most of those systems as a result.
FidoNet was originally founded in 1984 by Tom Jennings of San Francisco, California as a means to network together BBSes that used his own "Fido" BBS software. Over time, other BBS software was independently adapted to support the relevant FidoNet protocols, and the network became a popular means for hobbyist computer users to communicate. FidoNet was non-commercial, and mostly popular amongst hobbyist computer users, many of them hackers and radio amateurs, before the Internet became accessible and inexpensive.
Fidonet is governed in a hierarchical structure according to FidoNet policy [1], with designated coordinators at each level to manage the administration of fidonet nodes and resolve disputes between members. Network coordinators are responsible for managing the individual nodes within their area, usually a city or similar sized area. Regional coordinators are responsible for managing the administration of the network coordinators within their region, typically the size of a state, or small country. Zone coordinators are responsible for managing the administration of all of the regions within their zone. The world is divided into six zones, the coordinators of which elect one of themselves to be the "International Coordinator" of FidoNet.
FidoNet was historically designed to use modem-based dial-up access between bulletin board systems, and much of its policy and structure reflected this.
The FidoNet system officially referred only to transfer of Netmail-the individual private messages between people using bulletin boards-including the protocols and standards with which to support it. A netmail message would contain the name of the person sending, the name of the intended recipient, and the respective FidoNet addresses of each. The FidoNet system was responsible for routing the message from one system to the other (details below), with the bulletin board software on each end being responsible for ensuring that only the intended recipient could read it. Due to the hobbyist nature of the network, any privacy between sender and recipient was only the result of politeness from the owners of the FidoNet systems involved in the mail's transfer. It was common, however, for system operators to reserve the right to review the content of mail that passed through their system.
Netmail allowed for the "attachment" of a single file to every message. This led to a series of "piggyback" protocols that built additional features onto FidoNet by passing information back and forth as file attachments. These included the automated distribution of files, and transmission of data for inter-BBS games.
By far the most commonly-used of these piggyback protocols was Echomail, public discussions similar to Usenet newsgroups in nature. Echomail was supported by a variety of software that collected up new messages from the local BBSes public forums (the scanner), compressed it using ARC or ZIP, attached the resulting archive to a Netmail message, and sent that message to a selected system. On receiving such a message, identified because it was addressed to a particular "user", the reverse process was used to extract the messages, and a tosser put them back into the new system's forums.
Echomail was so popular that for many users, Echomail was the FidoNet. Private person-to-person Netmail was relatively rare.
Fidonet addresses explicitly consist of a Zone number, a Network number (or region number), and a Node number. They are written in the form Zone:Network/Node. The Fidonet structure also allows for semantic designation of region, host, and hub status for particular nodes, but this status is not directly indicated by the main address.
For example, consider a node located in Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA with an assigned node number is 918, located in Zone 1 (North America), Region 19, and Network 170. The full Fidonet address for this system would be 1:170/918. The region was used for administrative purposes, and was only part of the address if the node was listed directly underneath the Regional Coordinator, rather than one of the networks that were used to divide the region further.
Fidonet policy requires that each Fidonet system maintain a nodelist of every other member system. Information on each node includes the name of the system or BBS, the name of the node operator, the geographic location, the telephone number, and software capabilities. The nodelist is updated weekly, to avoid unwanted calls to nodes that had shut down, with their phone numbers possibly having been reassigned for voice use by the respective telephone company.
To accomplish regular updates, coordinators of each network maintain the list of systems in their local areas. The lists are forwarded back to the International Coordinator via automated systems on a regular basis. The International Coordinator would then compile a new nodelist, and generate the list of changes (nodediff) to be distributed for node operators to apply to their existing nodelist.
Since computer bulletin boards historically used the same telephone lines for transferring mail as were used for dial-in human users of the BBS, FidoNet policy dictates that at least one designated line of each FidoNet node must be available for accepting mail from other FidoNet nodes during a particular hour of each day.
"Zone Mail Hour", as it was named, varies depending on the geographic location of the node, and was designated to occur during the early morning. The exact hour varies depending on the time zone, and any node with only one telephone line is required to reject human callers. In practice, particularly in later times, most FidoNet systems tend to accept mail at any time of day when the phone line is not busy, usually during night.
Although monolithic software that encompassed all required functions in one package was available, most FidoNet deployments were designed in a modular fashion. A typical deployment would involve several applications that would communicate through shared files and directories, and switch between each other through carefully designed scripts or batch files.
Mailer software was responsible for transferring files and messages between systems, as well as passing control to other applications, such as the BBS software, at appropriate times. The mailer would initially answer the phone and, if necessary, deal with incoming mail via FidoNet transfer protocols. If the mailer answered the phone and a human caller was detected rather than other mailer software, the mailer would exit, and pass control to the BBS software, which would then initialise for interaction with the user. When outgoing mail was waiting on the local system, the mailer software would attempt to send it from time to time by dialing and connecting to other systems who would accept and route the mail further. Due to the costs of toll calls which often varied between peak and off-peak times, mailer software would usually allow its operator to configure the optimal times in which to attempt to send mail to other systems.
BBS software was used to interact with human callers to the system. BBS software would allow dial-in users to use the system's message bases and write mail to others, locally or on other BBSes. Mail directed to other BBSes would later be routed and sent by the mailer, usually after the user had finished using the system. BBSes would often allow users to exchange files, play games, and interact with other users in a variety of ways.
A scanner/tosser application, such as Squish, would normally be invoked when a BBS user had entered a new fidonet message that needed to be sent, or when a mailer had received new mail to be imported into the local messages bases. This application would be responsible for handling the packaging of incoming and outgoing mail, moving it between the local system's message bases and the mailer's inbound and outbound directories. The scanner/tosser application would generally be responsible for basic routing information, determining which systems to forward mail to.
In later times, message readers that were independent of BBS software were also developed. Often the System Operator of a particular BBS would use a devoted message reader, rather than the BBS software itself, to read and write FidoNet and related messages. In some cases FidoNet nodes, or more often FidoNet points, had no public bulletin board attached, and existed only for the transfer of mail for the benefit of the node's operator.
The original Fido BBS software, and much other original fidonet-supporting software, is no longer functional on modern systems. This is for several reasons, including problems related to the Y2K bug. In many cases, the original authors have left the BBS or shareware community, and the software, much of which was closed source, has been rendered abandonware. Alternative software had been designed to be interoperable with the same standards, however, and thus the network is still accessible.
List of telephony terms:
3gpp - a-law - abbreviated dialing - adsl - ani - answering machine - apn - automatic ring back - b-channel - baud - bell 202 modem - bit rate - bonding - bri - busy signal - cable modem - call-progress tones - call accounting - call capture - call forwarding - call originator - call park - call pick-up - call transfer - call waiting - call waiting deluxe - called party - caller id - caller id spoofing - calling party - carrier wave - cbr - ccitt - cdma - cdma2000 - cellular repeater - celp - channel - clec - clock rate - codec - collect call - conference - conference call - crc - csd - d-channel - data compression - device driver - dial-up - dial - dial tone - direct-inward-dialing - direct distance dialing - distinctive ring - dnis - dsl - dsp - dtmf - dtr - duplex - echo cancellation - edge - extension - fax - fcc - fdma - fidonet - follow-me - g.711 - g.723.1 - g.723 - g.726 - g.lite - gprs - gps - gsm - h.323 - harmonic - headphones - hscsd - hspda - iad - idsn - internet call waiting - isp - ivr - jack plug - local loop - long distance - microcontroller - mobile phone - modem - modulation - mu-law - music-on-hold - night service - off-hook - on-hook - pabx - pager - payphone - pbx - pcm - pots - prank call - precise tone plan - pstn - pulse dialling - push to talk - ring modulation - ring tone - ringback - ringing signal - rj11 - roaming - serial communications - serial port - signal noise - sim - simplex - sit - sms - softmodem - switchboard operator - tapi - tdma - telecommunications - telemarketing - telephone - telephone call - telephone card - telephone company - telephone exchange - telephone line - telephone number - telephone numbering plan - telephone operator - telephone switchboard - telephony - tts - twisted pair - umts - v.32 - v.32bis - v.34 - v.42bis - vbr - vertical service code - voicemail - voip - vox - wap - wav - wi-fi - wimax - wire
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