The term "mainframe" refers to large computers that were really all there were in the '60s. Minicomputers like the pdp8 and pdp11 began to take over from them in the '70s, and then of course, in the '80s along came the micro and turned the whole business of computing on its head.
There are, however, still a lot of mainframes and minis in use around the world.
There are two fundamental differences between fido and uucp. Firstly, the protocol used by the computers to conduct the passing of data is different. Secondly the form of message addressing is different.
Fido uses numerical addresses which look something like: 2:317/0 while uucp uses word addresses in internet form, like:
will@byteback.apana.org.au
uucp also uses a form of addressing which specifies the route a message must take to get where it's going. This is known as a "bang path" (bang = !) and looks like:
troll.apana.org.au!byteback!will
(which is the same address as the one above, but tells you a bit more about how it gets there - troll is the apana computer that byteback connects to internet through). To specify a bang path, you need to know the names of all the computers in the route. Don't worry about this too much, it's only here for illustration.
However, it does demonstrate the fact that the two systems are fundamentally incompatible. Software can be used to bodge-up links between systems running the two different types, but they're awkward to use as you have to specify two different addresses (one for internet and one for fido) and clumsy.
It also shows the difference in appearance between fido and internet addresses. The fido address tells you absolutely nothing about where or what that computer is, and because it's just a group of numbers, it's fairly hard to remember. But the internet address tells us several things: firstly, the .au at the end tells us it's in australia. The .org tells us the network it's part of is a non-profit organization. .apana tells us it's part of the australian public access network association. Of course, this last bit you wouldn't necessarily know, but all the rest follows reasonably straightforward rules.
When i refer to internet addresses and fido addresses here, i'm not talking about addresses *on* Internet or Fidonet, i'm talking about the style of addressing that those two systems use. There are hundreds of networks that use fido-protocol that aren't connected to Fidonet. This is probably the same for internet-protocol too.
Right, well, that all sounds a bit confusing, and in a way it is! Network addressing can be one of the most complicated aspects of computers. How complicated it is, depends on the size of the net you're dealing with. Also, fido addressing seems (to me, at least) considerably more complicated than internet addressing.
I know! I know!, i started off talking about fido and uucp and now i'm talking about fido and internet. Well, uucp is just one of the data transfer protocols that are used in internet. Uucp's the one that's used for batch network processing. The others could be too, but they don't seem to be used that way yet.
Leaving the technicalities aside, the real differences between the two types of protocol - as they affect us if we want to start or join a network, are as follows.
The main advantage of fido protocol is that there are a lot of existing networks and bulletin boards that use it. If we want to link up with any of them, our bbs software must be able to do that type of message handling. The big disadvantage of this system is that we're going to have to find quite a bit of money to pay the phone bill.
The advantages of internet are that we can do our long distance links through internet for the cost of a local call. As well as this, we get access, via e-mail to a vast ammount of users all round the world. Also, addressing and routing of mail is considerably easier with internet.
The disadvantages are incompatibility with fido networks and not nearly as much bbs software easily available.
The main difference in terms of service provided by the different types of net is in the way what's known as "echoes" or "conferences" or "newsgroups" etc operate. These are public or semi-public message areas which carry messages around the net in a public way - as opposed to private email. In fido-type nets, you can set up these net-wide message areas easily, as you require them. But with internet it's not quite so simple.
Internet carries what's known as "usenet newsgroups" these are public areas where anyone can read or write messages on a particular topic. For instance: comp.bbs.waffle is a newsgroup where people discuss setting up and running a waffle bbs. However, not just anyone can set up one of these newsgroups. An alternative to newsgroups, which anyone *can* set up is a mailing list. To set up a mailing list, you have to be able to do that sort of thing on the computer you access internet through which means it's not really open to *everybody* to run one.
Anyway, the way a mailing list works is this: any mail sent to the list will be copied and sent out to everyone on the list. That way, the list's recipients can carry on semi-public conversations by email. This system isn't really as useful to us as the fido echomail system, however, by bodging things up a bit, it can be made to look similar.
The first thing you have to do is find an entry point into the network. With fido nets this will probably be either the nearest node (bbs) in your country, or the nearest node in another country which can handle traffic to and from your bbs. It may well mean daily international phone calls (usually at a time when calls are cheapest) between your computer and your feed.
With internet protocol, networks can be set up in exactly the same way, with dial-up links between all nodes in the net. However, a more practical (and cheaper) way to do it is to get a uucp feed from an internet site in your local call area. Your computer then calls up the uucp site on a regular basis (at least once a day), passes all the outgoing mail to this system and picks up any incoming mail. The internet computer then automatically sends the mail off to its destinations.
Then, any other bbs in your net, anywhere in the world, can call up their uucp feeds and get your mail - and any other mail for them.
Organizing a uucp feed could be either very easy and cheap, or it could be difficult and/or expensive, depending on where you are in the world. Under some circumstances, you may have to make long-distance calls to your nearest uucp feed provider - then it will probably work out more expensive than if you were using fido protocol, as uucp seems to be slower.
Obviously, i can't give much information about how to find a uucp feed, as it varies from place to place. But the first thing to look out for is a non-profit network of some sort. Going through commercial internet providers is not really a viable proposition unless you haven't got any other choice. If there isn't a public access, non-profit or community type of net where you are, you could consider trying to get one started up. Shared community resources are always much better than commercial ones and it shouldn't be impossible to get the support necessary to get a net together. However, that's likely to be somewhere a long way down the track from where you probably are if you're reading this, so to start with, you're going to be looking for an already existing gateway into the net. Ask around. And keep asking. There's so many little bits of internet scattered around and it can take a while to find them.
Check out the spunk press anarchist internet contact list for anyone in your part of the world who might be able to help.
Once you've arranged your feed, you have to set up your bbs system to automatically poll the feed site. Polling means calling up and exchanging data.
Either your bulletin board software or your mailer software (e.g. front door, d'bridge etc) will have a scheduler (called "event manager" in front door) which you can set up to do certain things at preset times. You have to arrange a polling time (or, better, more than one polling time) with your feed site and then set up your scheduler to call it at that time.
I'm not going into all the technicalities of polling, as they're not only fairly complicated, but they vary from system to system. Anyway, this is one thing you'll have to sort out from the documentation that comes with your software. Don't forget, whoever's running your feed site will have experience in getting all this working and they should be happy to help you when you get stuck. And don't be put off by some of the weirdness of this aspect of networking, once you get the hang of it it's really quite simple.
One thing i must say though, is that when you're running a fido protocol system, you'll need three separate software packages: the bbs (e.g. superbbs, quickbbs, remote access), which does the things described in chapter 7, a mailer (e.g. front door, d'bridge, intermail), which answers the phone, manages events and does the polling; and a mail tosser (e.g. fmail, imail, tosscan), which sorts incoming and outgoing mail and makes sure they go to the right places.
With waffle (the only uucp bbs i know anything about), all these funtions are dealt with in the same package.
click here to go to chapter nine