On Wed, 13 May 2015, Alan Ianson wrote to Kurt Weiske:

 AI>> As a general rule email, netmail or echomail all have about the 
 AI>> same response time. Well, echomail and routed netmail may take 
 AI>> time to get here but aside from that..

 KW> LD rates in the US are so low, and most BBSes are IP-only 
 KW> nowadays; crashmail is usually feasible and as fast as netmail.

 AI> I'm investigating how to send netmail directly with binkd and hpt 
 AI> now. I'll probably have to go to the binkd area and make sure I 
 AI> understand a couple things correctly.

to maybe save you some time, hpt is the one that plays a more important part...
this is because it is the one that packs the netmails into PKT files and places
them where binkd can find them to send... if you have a netmail with the direct
or crash attribute, hpt should pack it directly to the destination... if the
netmail does not have direct or crash attributes, hpt should follow your
routing layout and pack the netmail to the next hop you have indicated for your
routed outbound netmails... that's pretty much it in a nutshell...

 KW> I just like using netmail over email when possible -- we're 
 KW> keeping this techology going, may as well use it!  :)

 AI> I do too, lots of times I like to reply by netmail. Routed is fine 
 AI> too but sometimes I wonder if the route is good. In those cases 
 AI> direct is preferable. 

there are some nodes that support the FTN PING capability... those that do
should be visible in the distributed nodelist by their PING flag... the idea is
that you send a message to PING at the destination system... intermediate
systems that are PING capable will send you a message back showing the route so
far... the destination system, if PING cabable, will send back a message that
the PING arrived and show the complete route taken... if there are no systems
in the route that are PING capable, you won't get anything back and will be
just as in the dark as you were previously ;)

you can test this by sending a netmail to PING at my /12 address...

)\/(ark