--------------------------------------------------------------------------- (23) Wed 6 Mar 91 16:48 By: Nick Reid To: All Re: External viewpoint (1/2) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Although the following extract contains some minor errors, and has addresses which are now out of date, I think it may be of sufficient interest to enough Z2 sysops to post it, by way of review, here. From pages 254-259 of "The Matrix - Computer Networks and Conferencing Systems Worldwide" by John S Quarterman, Texas Internet Consulting Preface dated July 1989 Published by Digital Press, 12 Crosby Drive, Bedford, MA 01730, USA Copyright (c) 1990 by Digital Equipment Corporation Order Number EY-C176E-DP DP ISBN 1-55558-033-5 PH ISBN 0-13-565607-9 -+------------ extract begins -+------------ FidoNet Fidonet is a cooperative network that has connected personal computers (originally IBM PCs or compatibles running MS-DOS) since 1983. Administration The network is administered by the coordinators of the nodes at the various levels of its routing hierarchy, with assistance from the International FidoNet Association (IFNA). FidoNet is not designed to be a commercial venture, but some system operators (sysops) make minimal charges to recover the cost of mail and conferencing services, which are the main service provided. No one is paid for time spent administering the network, and the machines are typically owned by the sysops. In Europe, systems are often owned or supported by commercial organizations or well-organized clubs. The network currently has about 220 conferencing areas; the conferencing software is called echomail. It extends throughout the world and is arranged in a tree structure, divided into zones by continental areas. Most nodes are in the United States and tend to be clumped in metropolitan areas such as St Louis, Boston, and Chicago. But there are many nodes in Europe, a few in Indonesia, and even some in South Africa. About 2500 machines are connected, and the network is growing anywhere from 20 to 75 percent a year, depending on whom you ask and what measure is used. Basically anyone with an MS-DOS machine can connect. There are recent ports of FidoNet software and compatible programs for Apples, Amigas, and other kinds of personal computers. Protocols Many links are at 1200bps or 2400bps, but most long-distance links with high traffic are now 9600bps. Most connections are by the Fido protocol, which is a dialup protocol similar to UUCP that was invented for this network [Bush 1986]. It uses a variant of XMODEM for data consistency [Jennings 1983] and also sometimes uses ZMODEM. Some nodes now also speak UUCP, using a public domain implementation that became available in 1987, and there are gateways into the UUCP mail network and the Internet. Management The network is arranged in a tree structure [Jennings 1985a] of three basic tiers (zones, nets, and nodes), with two intermediate tiers: Zones The major zones are 1 for North America, 2 for Europe, Africa and the Middle East, and 3 for Asia. Zone 7 is sometimes used for Alternet, which is a splinter network from the U.S. Northeast that is connected to FidoNet but is administratively separate from FidoNet and IFNA; neither zone 7 nor any Alternet nodes are found in the map maintained by IFNA. There are other splinter networks. (Regions) This is an intermediate tier that has been added for administrative convenience. Nets These usually correspond to major metropolitan areas. There are about 400 nets. (Hubs) These are machines that form another intermediate tier. They usually spring up within metropolitan areas to offload machines of the net tier. Nodes These are the final leaf systems. There are about 400 nodes. (Points) But these are a further level for people whose machines do not run a full bulletin board system but who send or receive a great deal of mail or echomail. Echomail, like all traffic in FidoNet (except files, under certain conditions), travel as mail. It is distinguished by special control words in the body of the mail message. Mail usually travels from the originating node machine to the net machine corresponding to the destination node. For example, node 105/302 sends mail for node 152/3 to node 152/0, which will forward it by a local call. The idea is for calls into a region to be batched through one machine in order to maximize use of long-distance telephone calls. Sometimes the reverse is done: all nodes on a net send outbound mail through the net host. All traffic for a point travels through its superior node and any superior points. The distinction between the three main tiers and the intermediate ones is mainly that the former are reflected directly in addresses as used by users and the latter are used transparently for routing. A FidoNet address is composed of the user's name, a net (a region of host), and a node (a Fido), e.g., user NET net_number NODE node_number where NET and NODE are required literal words, and the spaces are also required. Intercontinental mail is specified by also including a zone, e.g., user ZONE zone_number NET net_number NODE node_number There is a shorthand form that separates the zone and the net with a colon and the net and the node with a slash, as in user 1:151/299 Points are sometime distinguished like this: user 1:151/299.0 The three different separators are used because each level was added one by one, and there was a desire to preserve the ability to use the old form of just net/node, as in 151/299, while expanding the hierarchy at both ends. A complete nodelist is updated and distributed weekly from Phoenix by David Dodell. The intercontinental connection from North America - i.e., zone 1 - to the other zones is in Portland, Oregon, and is run by Randy Bush (). Mail from the United States to Europe usually takes from 24 to 48 hours. There is no extra charge for the overseas links. Interconnections There is a FidoNet DNS domain that has been registered with the Internet since March 1988: FIDONET.ORG (it was originally IFNA.ORG). This domain applies only to FidoNet proper, not to any of the splinter networks. Ironically enough for a network totally dependent on a static host table, the Internet domain is done totally dynamically by domain nameservers. Some gateways have the domain names castle.fidonet.org, fidogate.fidonet.org, and ankh.fidonet.org. FidoNet nodes are also known by transliterations of their FidoNet numeric addresses, as in f299.n151.z1.fidonet.org or p0.f299.n151.z1.fidonet.org interconnections from FidoNet to other networks are shown in Table 10.8 and described below: Table 10.8. FidoNet interconnections -+---------------- Network Syntax -+---------------- Internet UUCP gateway ARPA:user@domain UUCP UUCP gateway UUCP:host1!host2!host!user BITNET UUCP gateway UUCP:host1!psuvax1!host.bitnet!user -+---------------- UUCP To get to the UUCP network, a FidoNet user sends mail to a gateway such as fidogate.fidonet.org, known as 1:125/406 on FidoNet. The mail is addressed to user UUCP, and the first line of the text is UUCP:host1!host2!host!user The literal leading keyword UUCP: is required. If UUCP source routing is used, the path must be relative to the gateway as a UUCP host. Some gateways support domain addressing. BITNET There is no direct gateway, but indirecting through BITNET and UUCP gateway psuvax1 may work. Internet It may be possible to get to the Internet by indirecting through UUCP, but there is now a more direct route through the gateway castle.fidonet.org or 152/201, which understands domain addresses when used in the first line of text after the leading keyword ARPA:. Uses There are some unusual uses of this network. Some people at the UN are trying to make much of their collected information available to the general public over FidoNet. For example, there is a UN directory of databases that is kept in Geneva and a UN yearbook compiled by UNICEF. Other uses made possible by the grass roots nature of the network range from political polling to postal chess to medical collaboration. It is popular in social service work. Another interesting use of it is a conference of handicapped people (gatewayed to USENET and BITNET and elsewhere). For many shut-ins, this is the only way they can communicate with each other, and much information is exchanged that is of great value to disabled people [da Cruz 1988]. The Fifth International FidoNet Conference (FidoCon) was held in June 1988 in Ede, Netherlands, the Sixth in August 1988 in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the Seventh in August 1989 in San Jose, California, with a local branch of the network set up in the conference hotel. These conferences provide a forum for users of the network to meet each other face to face. History The original FidoNet software, called Fido, was developed by Tom Jennings in 1983 [Jennings 1985b] as basically an extension of the Fido Bulletin Board System (Fido BBS). The new software provided unattended electronic mail transfer between nodes of the new network. Exchange of conferencing messages and access to USENET newsgroups by personal computer users was added later. The software was distributed as shareware but without sources. A problem with this software was that it required the machine to go into a transfer-only mode that prohibited use for other purposes. Thus, most nodes were accessible as bulletin board systems during the day and transferred data between themselves during the night. One effect of this was to limit the speed of mail: often it was one day per hop. Another mailer called SEAdog, named for System Enhancement Associates (SEA), was developed by Thom Henderson in 1986 [Henderson 1986] and is a commercial product. It allows demand calling, which is known on FidoNet as crash mail. Henderson also wrote arc, which allows Lempel-Ziv data compression to speed effective transfer rates, just as is done on USENET. Arc is in the public domain. Other, more recent mailers include Opus, Binkley, Dutchie, D'Bridge, FrontDoor, Tabby for the Apple MacIntosh, and Pandora for the Atari ST. There are about 30 FidoNet mailer software packages. Most of them are shareware, but Opus is in the public domain; it is also a front end and BBS system, not a router, and is partly written in assembler. Binkley is written in C. There are several BBS software packages for FidoNet, including Fido, Opus, QBBS, and TBBS. Any of these can use any of the above mailers. QBBS is single tasking. TBBS allows up to 16 simultaneous users on an MS-DOS system. Increasing use is being made of Intel 386 systems. The most controversial recent development is the formation of splinter groups that are displeased with IFNA. IFNA continues to be active in the network and in FidoCon. Access A gateway between USENET and FidoNet is administered by Tim Pozar 1:125/406 "tim pozar"@f406n125.z1.fidonet.org An Internet and UUCP gateway is run by: Lee Damon at FidoNet 1:105/302 nomad@castle.fidonet.org fidohost@castle.FIDONET.ORG verdix!castle!fidohost agora!castle!fidohost {tektronix,hp-pcd}!orstcs!castle!fidohost {verdix,agora,{tektronix,hp-pcd}!orstcs}!castle!nomad {verdix,agora,{tektronix,hp-pcd}!orstcs}!castle!fidohost For the dialup number of a Fido node in your area, contact your local IBM PC user group or: IFNA +1-314-576-4067 P.O. Box 41143 St. Louis, MO 63141 U.S.A. IFNA also publishes a weekly newsletter called FidoNews, which appears not only on FidoNet, but also in the newsgroup comp.org.fidonet on USENET. It has the unusual editorial policy of publishing everything submitted. It is also not in any known digest format, so reading it online is painful; apparently it is intended to be printed. References [Bush 1986] Bush, Randy, "A Basic FidoNet Technical Standard," IFNA, St Louis, MO, 10 September 1986. [da Cruz 1988] da Cruz, Frank, Personal communications, October - November 1988. [Henderson 1986] Henderson, Thom, SEAdog Electronic Mail System Version 3, Thom Henderson, April 1986. [Jennings 1983] Jennings, Tom, "Extending XMODEM/MODEM File Transfer Protocol to support DOS," IFNA, St Louis, MO, 20 September 1983. [Jennings 1985a] Jennings, Tom, "Fido's Internal Structures," IFNA, St Louis, MO, 14 September 1985. [Jennings 1985b] Jennings, Tom, "FidoNet Electronic Mail Protocol," IFNA, St Louis, MO, 8 February 1985. -+---------- extract ends -+---------- "The Matrix" opens with a quotation from a US court report: "Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition of nearly every other form of freedom." Benjamin Nathan Cardozo Palko v Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319,327 The publication is a comprehensive and practical description of computer networks worldwide. The author has been associated with the development of telecommunications networks since the late 1970s and has served on the USENIX Board of Directors since 1986. Author's acknowledgments include that to William Gibson, whose science fiction novel "Neuromancer" was the source for the book's title, as well as those to "The Times Atlas of the World" and Stewart Brand's "Whole Earth Catalog". In his preface the author notes: "Paper is not the most natural medium for discussions of electronic media. If you would be interested in subscribing to a continuously updated online database of material similar to that in [the] book, please contact the author [John S. Quarterman, at matrix@longway.tic.com The Matrix P.O. Box 14621 Austin, TX 78761 U.S.A.] Suggestions for database access methods, user interfaces, and material to include are welcome, in conjunction with a project already in progress." In an afterword on the legal implications of electronic communications (including discussion the UK Data Protection Act and similar) the author notes: "It has been asserted that, subject to legitimate regulation, there exists in international law support for a basic human right to communicate. The assertion is founded on Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted unanimously by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 10 December 1948: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes the freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."