FidoNet
It uses a store-and-forward system to exchange private (email) and public (forum) messages between the BBSes in the network, as well as other files and protocols in some cases.
This modular construction also allowed FidoNet to easily upgrade to new data compression systems, which was important in an era using modem-based communications over telephone links with high long-distance calling charges.
In this version, FidoNet was developed as a way to exchange mail between the first two Fido BBS systems, Jennings' and Madill's, to "see if it could be done, merely for the fun of it".
[5][6][7] In early 1984, Ben Baker was planning on starting a BBS for the newly forming computer club at the McDonnell Douglas automotive division in St. Louis.
The club's president told Baker that DEC would be giving them a Rainbow 100 computer on indefinite loan, so he made plans to move the CBBS onto this machine.
[4] This would allow them to compose mail on their local machines, and then deliver it quickly, as opposed to calling in and typing the message in while on a long-distance telephone connection.
These spawned hundreds of new echos, and led to the creation of the Echomail Conference List (Echolist) by Thomas Kenny in January 1987.
The evolution towards the net/node addressing scheme was also useful for reducing communications costs between continents, where time zone differences on either end of the connection might also come into play.
[10] At the same time, it was noted that some power users were interested in using FidoNet protocols as a way of delivering the large quantities of echomail to their local machines where it could be read offline.
From 1988 on, PCBoard systems were able to host similar functionality known as RelayNet, while other popular networks included RBBSNet from the Commodore 64 world, and AlterNet.
Much of this can be traced to the fact that the inter-net delivery cost real money, and the traffic grew more rapidly than decreases caused by improving modem speeds and downward trending long-distance rates.
Also, Usenet and internet mail has been added, along with long file names to many newer versions of BBS software, some being freeware, resulting in increasing use.
The FidoNet system officially referred only to the transfer of Netmail—the individual private messages between people using bulletin boards—including the protocols and standards with which to support it.
Due to the hobbyist nature of the network, any privacy between the sender and recipient was only the result of politeness from the owners of the FidoNet systems involved in the mail's transfer.
This led to a series of piggyback protocols that built additional features onto FidoNet by passing information back and forth as file attachments.
Zones 7-4095 are used for othernets; groupings of nodes that use Fido-compatible software to carry their own independent message areas without being in any way controlled by FidoNet's political structure.
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.
Part of the objective behind the formation of local nets was to implement cost reduction plans by which all messages would be sent to one or more hubs or hosts in compressed form (ARC was nominally standard, but PKZIP is universally supported); one toll call could then be made during off-peak hours to exchange entire message-filled archives with an out-of-town uplink for further redistribution.
Operators within individual networks would sometimes have cost-sharing arrangements, but it was also common for people to volunteer to pay for regular toll calls either out of generosity or to build their status in the community.
If official FidoNet distributors refused to transfer Echomail due to additional toll charges, other node operators would sometimes volunteer.
The FidoNet system was best adapted to an environment in which local telephone service was inexpensive and long-distance calls (or intercity data transfer via packet-switched networks) costly.
Points were introduced to address this, allowing technically savvy users to receive the already compressed and batched Echomail (and Netmail) and read it locally on their own machines.
The FidoNet software typically consisted of a number of small utility programs run by manually edited scripts that required some level of technical ability.
Dedicated offline mail reader programs such as Blue Wave, Squiggy and Silver Xpress (OPX) were introduced in the mid-1990s and quickly rendered the point system obsolete.
[26] 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.
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.
There are several modern Windows-based FidoNet Mailers available today with source code, including Argus, Radius, and Taurus.
On the hardware side, Fido systems were usually well-equipped machines, for their day, with quick CPUs, high-speed modems and 16550 UARTs, which were at the time an upgrade.
[citation needed] Some BBSes, including those that are now available for users with Internet connections via telnet, also retain their FidoNet netmail and echomail feeds.
