What is F.T.N. ?

FTN is an abbreviation of Fido Technology Network. Fido comes from FidoNet, a network of computer hobbyists, which makes it possible to exchange both private (Netmail), and public (Echomail) messages between systems (Bulletin Board Systems) connected to this network. After FidoNet was founded, other networks with the same technology were born... FidoNet was founded in 1984 by Tom Jennings. What is it? An FTN network is an amateur electronic mail network with Most mail nodes are publicly accessible Bulletin Board Systems (BBS). Before Internet access became common place, FTN networks probably ranked up there alongside some of the better known on-line services in terms of the number of people who used it. Now, of course, it is adapting to the new technologies and many FTN systems are also web servers, news servers, and generally accessible over the Internet in one way or another. Netmail Netmail are private electronic mail messages. Netmail is something like E-mail within the Internet. Echomail Echomail is a broadcast medium: every message that anyone enters, anywhere in the FTN network, gets distributed automatically to every other person who has subscribed to a particular echo (or conference). Echomail is something like Usenet within the Internet. File Distributions In addition to electronic mail, an FTN network can (and does) distribute files. This is similar to Echomail, although somewhat more centralized: a system subscribes to a File Distribution and then receives all files that are placed into distribution at one or more points of origin. An FTN network is able to ditribite the files without encoding them to UU-encode, Binhex, etc. These File distributions are as varied as Echomail. How it works FTN is designed around point to point transfers: each system can call any other system (literally, using phone lines and modems, or metaphorically through some other mechanism). In order to do this, it depends upon a telephone directory called the Nodelist. The Nodelist allows you to look up a system by its node number and retrieve a telephone number or IP address (and some other helpful information). A FTN address consists of four components: Zone The highest component of an FTN address is the zone number. Each FTN network has is own Zone number: Fidonet has zone numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, PhlegmNet has zone number 165. Region For practical and historical reasons, each Zone is divided into Regions. A Region is a contiguous portion of a Zone, but it isn't used when specifying an address. Net The Net is a geographical area within a Region; Nets may be large or small, covering a large state or a part of one city, but are set up primarily to minimize telephone company charges. The geographical definition of a Net has seen some elasticity with the reduced reliance on telephone calls to actually move the mail. Node A Node was originally an individual system, but in practice corresponds to an individual phone number; a system may have more than one phone number, and the only way to list more than one phone number is to assign each a unique node number. Point Technically, Points are not members of the FTN network; they are "subnodes" and are not directly called by Nodes under most circumstances. Newer software does support having Points in the Nodelist, though, and can call them. So, a complete FTN address would look like 165:10/0.0 Most of the time, each level (Zone, Region, and Net) has a coordinator whose primary duty is to assemble the corresponding portion of the Nodelist.