On Tue, 17 Mar 2015, Markus Reschke wrote to mark lewis:

 MR>> What is the correct term for the process of echomail leaving a node
 MR>> in one zone and entering a node in another zone?

 ml> it isn't zone gating... there is no term for it unless the echomail 
 ml->agoranet) which is 
 ml> plain simple gating as far as i can remember right now at 0700 with 
 ml> no c0ffee... echomail crossing between zones in the same FTN is 
 ml> simply echomail crossing between zones... there's nothing special 
 ml> about it...

 MR> It seems that I'm not the only one talking about echomail zone
 MR> gating ;) 

you are correct... the term has been misused for years and years... i've
attempted to correct the usage every time i've seen it being discussed...
at least since back in the '90s...

there is/was a specific method and purpose for zone gating and it was for
netmail only... randy bush documented it and the software requirements back
in the '80s... specifically, the message is addressed to the destination
individual at the zone gate's address with the actual destination address
in the control lines... in this way, normal routing would take the address
in the header and route the message to the zone gate... the zone gate would
then look at the control lines and extract the real destination address,
adjust the header with the read address and shot the message to the zone
gate on the other side of the link... that zone would pass the message on
toward the destination... this method allowed for netmail messages to pass
between zones and even other FTNs that had gateways with fidonet so that
members of either network could communicate with others in other networks
without having to be a member of both networks...

)\/(ark