23 May 06 21:54, Alex Shakhaylo wrote to All:

 AS> As long as I was not satisfied with the only answer I've got to my
 AS> question I decided to ask it once again.

 AS> So, here is the question.

 AS> Does anybody remember how all the six zones were created ? Please,
 AS> negative answers are olso welcomed. They, at least, will make me feel
 AS> my question was heard ! :)

From Fidonet's History documents.

 Date: 09 Aug 93  20:29:00
     From: Bart Mullins
       To: All
     Subj: FidoNet History
     _____________________________________________________________________

     Hello All!

     A few days ago, some folks asked questions about the history of
     fidonet.  Well John Madill is working with Infinite Technologies and
     I got the story straight from him.    I re-post it here with his
     permission.


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                               O\

  Date:  7/30/93    Time:  11:21 PM
     ---------------------------------------------------------------------
          To:  Mullins,Bart (Bart Mullins {at} MWRS.12MWRSS)
        From:  John Madill  (John {at} Infinite)
     Subject:  FidoNet History
     ---------------------------------------------------------------------
     Message:

     Originated By: John Madill (JOHN {at} INFINITE)

(Setting up the dateline)

     Back in the early 80's, I was working at a ComputerLand in Baltimore
     (not Boston ... Tom Jennings was living in San Francisco, but he was
     working for Phoenix Technologies in Boston.)


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                               O\

(How it happened)

     Tom took on the responsibility of dishing out the node numbers - this
     was the only way we could eliminate duplicates - an since we only
     allocated 3 positions for node numbers (nnn), soon we had a *big*
     problem.  We had close to 1000 nodes and growing.  Now what?  We took
     the opportunity to alter the Nodelist format so that we had regions
     and nodes within regions ... (region-node), divided the USA into
     regions, and appointed Sysops as "region leaders" who could give out
     node numbers and maintain the nodelist for that region.  These lists
     were then distributed, and merged together at each site by add-in
     nodelist generators.

     Another stage in development was when we went international.  We
     decided to add in Zones (Zone-Region-Node) *before* we ran out of
     Regions.


     This was pretty cool ... for a while ... and then IFNA got formed.
     The International FidoNet Association ... oh boy!  Enter politics.
     For those of you that have never been there, you really don't know
     what missed.

     People got upset ... alternate nets got created (AlterNet, etc.), and
     people left.  What started as a grass-roots communications network
     grew rapidly out of control due to internal political struggles.

     I got disillusioned, and resigned from zone 1, region 2, node number
     2.


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                               O\


Your next question should be, when was IFNA formed? That'll give you a
timeline of when the zones were created.




Roy
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