• FTS-0004.002 -- RFC (second attempt)

    From Björn Felten@2:203/2 to Björn Felten on Tuesday, November 06, 2018 14:43:38
    Björn Felten -> All skrev 2014-11-07 00:57:
    FTS-0004 Echomail Specification

    WHAT IS ECHOMAIL?

    Echomail is a technique to permit several nodes on the Fidonet
    network to share messages. All systems sharing a given conference see
    any messages entered into the Echo by any of the participating
    systems.

    HOW IT WORKS

    Echomail is functionally compatible with Netmail. In general, the
    process is:

    1. A message is entered into a designated area on a FidoNet
    compatible system.

    2. This message is "Exported" along with some control information
    to each system "linked" to the Echo through the originating
    system.

    3. Each of the receiving systems "Import" the message into the
    proper Echomail area.

    4. The receiving systems then "Export" these messages, along with additional control information, to each of their conference
    links.

    5. Return to step 3.

    Following the steps literally would mean messages would never stop
    being exported and transmitted to other systems. The information
    contained in the 'control information' section is used to prevent transmitting the same message more than once to a single system.


    CONTROL INFORMATION

    There are five pieces of control information associated with an
    Echomail message. Some are optional, some are not. The following
    control fields determine how Echomail is handled:

    1. Area line

    This is the first line of an Echomail message. Its actual appearance
    is:

    AREA:ECHO

    Where ECHO the name of the conference. This line is added when an
    Echo is being "Exported" to another system. It is based upon
    information found in a configuration file for the designated message
    area. This field is REQUIRED by the receiving system to "Import" a
    message into the correct Echomail area.

    2. Tear Line

    This line is near the end of a message and consists of three dashes
    (---) followed by an optional program specifier. This is used to show
    the first program used to add Echomail compatible control information
    to the message. The tear line generated looks like:

    --- <a small product-specific banner>

    This line is optional.

    3. Origin line

    This line appears near the bottom of a message and gives a small
    amount of information about the system where it originated. It looks
    like:

    * Origin: The EchoMail BBS (1:132/101)

    The " * Origin: " part of the line is a constant field. This is
    followed by the name of the system as taken from a config file. The complete network address (1:132/101 in this case) is added by the
    program inserting the line. The field is generated at the same time as
    the tear line, and therefore may either be generated at the time of creation or during the first "export" processing.

    4. Seen-by Lines

    There can be many seen-by lines at the end of Echomail messages. They
    are used to determine the systems that are to receive the exported messages. The format of the line is:

    SEEN-BY: 132/101 113 136/601 1014/1

    The net/node numbers correspond to the net/node numbers of the
    systems having already received the message. In this way a message is never sent to a system twice. An Echomail system must NEVER send a
    message to a system that is already in the SEEN-BY line(s).

    The line is added if it is not already a part of the message.

    5. PATH Lines

    These are the last line(s) in a Echomail message. It appears as
    follows:

    ^aPATH: 132/101 1014/1

    Where the ^a stands for Control-A (ASCII character 1) and the
    net/nodes listed correspond to those systems having processed the
    message before it reached the current system. This is not the same as
    the seen-by lines, because those lines list all systems the message
    has been sent to, while the path line contains all systems having
    actually processed the message.

    METHODS OF SENDING ECHOMAIL

    Each message exported from an Echomail area has one message generated
    for each receiving system. This mail is then sent the same as any
    other network mail.

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    --




    ..

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