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Technology in detail · Network

How Fidonet worked

The Fidonet connected thousands of private mailboxes worldwide, with no internet at all. For that to work, it was organized strictly hierarchically. The addresses are built like a postal address, from the world region down to the individual mailbox.

The address reads like a postal address

Every mailbox had a unique address following the scheme Zone:Net/Node.Point. Empire BBS was 2:301/416. Just like a postal address gets more specific going from country through canton and town down to the street, the Fidonet address also goes from broad to specific, from the world region down to the individual mailbox:

The network tree

From the zone down to the individual user, Fidonet forms a tree. The same order as a postal address, from broad to specific.

Hierarchy of Fidonet: Zone, Net, Node, PointZone 2EuropeNet 301CH / FLNet 310 …other regions/416Empire BBS/407/472 ….1.2Points = private users
Top to bottom: Zone (continent) → Net (region) → Node (individual mailbox) → Point (private participant). Empire BBS sat as node/416 in Net 301.

Why hubs were needed

A node didn't dial every other node directly for each message. With long-distance calls, that would have been unaffordable. Instead, mail was bundled and passed along the hierarchy. That's exactly what hubs were for. A hub is a collection point. It takes in the messages of many nodes and passes them on in a bundle.

The effect was enormous. Instead of a hundred nodes each dialing abroad individually, one international gateway per region made just one expensive international call. It carried the bundled mail of a whole zone.

Polling mostly ran in the evening and at night. There were two reasons for that. During the day, the lines were supposed to stay free. And at night, phone rates were lower. The times were coordinated so a message would move from system to system as fast as possible. That way it reached the whole world within a few days, even though no computer was "online" in today's sense.

Empire BBS wasn't just an endpoint here. In the Amiga networks, the mailbox itself took on a hub role and forwarded mail to other systems.

How that was configured

All of it lived in a single list, the SYSTEMS.CONFIG. It held every counterpart side by side, across all the networks Empire BBS belonged to: Fidonet, AmiNet, Amiganet, and the rest. Whether node, hub, or point, all of them sat in the same list. Every line records the address, the packing format, the handshake method, and whether Empire actively sent the mail or held it for pickup.

The Xenolink Network Systems Editor with the file SYSTEMS.CONFIG open: a long list of Fidonet addresses such as 2:301/416.10 or 155:41/0.0, each with the columns LHA, EMSI, and a send mode of send or HOLD, and settings for password, linkup, ARCmail, and packet check on the right.
Empire BBS's SYSTEMS.CONFIG, two networks in one view: zone 155 up top, the Fido block 2:301 below. The many 2:301/416.x entries are its own points, set to HOLD, so their mail waited until they called in. Where it says send, Empire dialed out.

An original document: the Point guide

Anyone who wanted to join as a Point got a guide to read on Empire BBS, written by the sysop himself, in the tone of the early 90s. It explains what a Point is, how to become one, and lists the boards then available across all networks. Here's the original, unchanged (including the Amiga-typical umlaut spelling "ue/ae/oe"):

Show original guide (Empire BBS, ~1993)
POINT.TXT — Empire BBS
Original text from the Empire BBS bulletins, written by the sysop. Mentions among other things the Point software "Spot" and around 105 boards across Aminet, Fidonet, ParaNet and SFNet.

The same idea in other networks

Fidonet was the best-known network, but far from the only one. Most mailbox networks were built almost the same way, the same order of zones, nets and nodes. Once you understood the Fidonet logic, you could find your way around anywhere. Empire BBS carried its own address in each of these networks.

Then there were a number of smaller and topical networks, such as ParaNet, RaveNet, SFNet, or the SWF3 net built around the radio station of the same name. In total, Empire BBS was reachable in about ten such networks, each with its own address.

The whole network zoo: over thirty FTN networks at a glance

Each of these networks worked technically like Fidonet, the same address scheme Zone:Net/Node, the same store-and-forward logic, just with its own topic focus and its own zone number. This overview comes from the Swiss BBS list ("DreamList") from around 1994. Bold marks the networks Empire BBS itself took part in.

ZoneNetFocus
2:Fidonetworldwide, over 20,000 systems
9:VirNetvirus hunters
15:DataNetLinkAsia
15:AdultNeterotica
16:ZyXELnetZyXEL modems
27:SigNet—
37:ParaNetparapsychology
39:AmigaNetAmiga, worldwide
42:SuperNetSuperBBS
43:AnarchyNet—
44:AmiNetAmiga, Switzerland
52:GlobalNet—
56:X-Neterotica
69:GayNet—
73:RA-NetRemote Access BBS
74:DemNetdemocracy
81:OS2NetIBM OS/2
88:TopNet—
90:NeSTAtari ST
90:MaxNet—
91:Robo-NetRoboBoard/FX-BBS
94:GrafxNet—
100:BorlandNet—
101:FrancoMedia—
102:Lif-Net—
144:GamesNet—
144:LichtNetmagic, UFOs and the like
154:RIPnetRIP graphics
177:Box Officemovies
202:Oase Netshareware
250:SL-NetSearchlight BBS
640:SwissWildNetWildcat! BBS

Bridge to the internet: the UUCP gateway

Fidonet could do more than just connect mailboxes. Through a UUCP gateway, you could send and receive real email. So Empire BBS already had its own email address in 1992. That was years before the internet went public.

It wasn't fast. A UUCP mail was passed from system to system, mostly during the nightly polling. Depending on the number of hops, it could take one to several days to complete its whole route. For the standards of the time, that was still impressive.

Back to overviewFidonet in the glossary