Text 1287, 101 rader
Skriven 2008-03-23 02:04:13 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
   Kommentar till text 1276 av mark lewis (1:3634/12.0)
Ärende: Proper nodelist format for Internet-only nodes?
=======================================================
Hello mark,

On Saturday March 22 2008 19:24, you wrote to me:

 MvdV>> Not MBSE. It has a different approach. It has a telnettable mailer
 MvdV>> and a telnettable BBS, but it does not use one as a front for the
 MvdV>> other. It simply runs them as two different tasks on a separete
 MvdV>> port. The equivalent of having a different POTS line for the mailer
 MvdV>> and the BBS.

 ml> yeah... like i said, i couldn't remember... however, i do remember
 ml> there being more than one that operates like this just not which ones
 ml> :?

There may be others. In fact I see no reason why any tenettable BBS ad mailer
could not be confgured to operate in thsi way. I could run InterMail with a
telnet shim in MO mode on port 60023 and run RA with teh same shim in another
task on port 23.

 MvdV>> Makes sense in the IP age.

 ml> to a point, i agree with that... on the other hand, depending on the
 ml> overall service offering, it could be a "problem" in some
 ml> circumstances...

What problem could that be?

 MvdV>> Telnet to fido.mbse.eu and you get a BBS. Telnet to the same
 MvdV>> hostname at port 60177 (As advertised in the nodelist) and you
 MvdV>> get the well known: **EMSI_REQA77E.

 ml> right... that denotes a EMSI capable mailer... if they turn off EMSI
 ml> capabilities, what do you get?

Depends on the mailer. In the case of MBSE which is a fully compatible FTN
mailer, it would eventaulleu fall back to FTS-1.

 MvdV>>> The closest that comes to a BBS flags in the nodelist is the
 MvdV>>> MO flag and that signals the absence of a BBS...

 ml>> not quite... it indicates that that system accepts mail only...

 MvdV>> So if it only accept mail, it does not accpet human callers.
 MvdV>> I'd say..

 ml> remember, the nodelist is for /mailer/ information ;)

Yes, I know. I always thought the MO flag was the odd ball out.

 ml> i don't recall, off hand, who brought this fact up but the precedent
 ml> was set way back in the very early days of fidonet... i suspect that
 ml> it may have even been set with the original fido software

The orignial mailer software is TJ's Fido. It was a mailer and a BBS, but not
both at the same time. It had to be started in mailer mode /or/ BBS mode.

Frontdoor started out as a switch that answered the call and fell through to
either a mailer or a BBS depending on wheter it detected a human caller or not.
The CM signalled the capability to receive mailer calls outside ZMH (NMH). The
pre Frontdoor systems ran in maier mode during (N|Z)MH only and in BBS mode
during the rest of the day.

 ml> where someone wanted to be a member but not not have any human
 ml> callers... at least, not accepting them as indicated by the nodelist
 ml> ;)

As I understand it the MO systems initially were dedicated hub systems that
assigned all their resources to distributing mail.

 ml>> it doesn't say anything about the presence or absence of a BBS...

 MvdV>> Hmm...

 ml> yeah, that was another of my thoughts on the flag many years back...

Initially ther were just two things that could answer a modem call. A mailer or
a BBS. So what else can a MO flag signal than that there is only a mailer that
will answer. I.e. not a BBS?

 ml>> i could easily fly the MO flag and keep my BBS operation behind
 ml>> it just like it is and there would be no problems as far as
 ml>> fidonet mail stuffs are concerned...

 MvdV>> Indeed, it would cause no problems as far as fidonet mail stuff
 MvdV>> is concerned. But it would make a difference to a a human
 MvdV>> caller that attempts to connect. If there is no BBS he/she
 MvdV>> would not be able to do anything. If there is a BBS behind it,
 MvdV>> he/she would get the BBS. Isn't  that what the MO flag was
 MvdV>> meant for?

 ml> AFAIK, the flag was only meant to indicate "Mailer Only" status...
 ml> thus its MO characters ;)

As there were just two applucations that could answer a modem call, mailer and
BBS, mailer only implies no BBS...


Cheers, Michiel

--- GoldED+/W32-MINGW 1.1.5-b20070503
 * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)