On 2017 Jun 27 21:47:00, you wrote to me:

 ml>> sad that there aren't any netmail zonegates for his other networks so
 ml>> that one could send netmail through them to his system... zonegates
 ml>> were a GoodThing... granted, they were used for fidonet zones in
 ml>> the beginning but the concept works and worked great for othernets,
 ml>> too... sure, some of them may not want contact from "fidonet" but
 ml>> we're only talking about netmail here, not echos... route or deliver
 ml>> direct to the zonegate and let them handle delivery on the other side
 ml>> based on their network ops... it is crazy to have to join an othernet
 ml>> just to be able to let someone know of a problem on their system...
 ml>> that's playing othernet roulette just trying to find one that they
 ml>> may be active on...

 PH> Where do I find the software to run this? Sounds like an interesting
 PH> thing to do for netmail between Zone 21 and others.

technically speaking, it should be just a nodelist entry in both FTN nets and
some routing statements... normal routing of netmails via your tosser (or smart
dynamic mailer) should be able to handle it... the main thing being that Z21
netmails should be able to be routed or delivered directly to the Z21 gateway
system and that system would then send the netmail on toward the Z21
destination... replies would come back through the Z21 gateway system to the
fidonet side and make their way to the destination...

there was a trick, of sorts, that was done at one time... mainly the message
header contained the zonegate information and the control lines contained the
actual destination but i'm not so sure that that needs to be done, these
days... if everyone has their routing set up properly, then all Z21 netmail
should be directed to the FIDOZ21 zonegate...

there is, somewhere, a document written by randy bush (IIRC) that explains how
zonegates worked when they were conceived... the real key is the ^aINTL line...
FSC-0004 explains but i think it tends to confuse netmail and echomail as randy
speaks of stripping seenbys which are an echomail thing and not in netmail...
anyway, yeah, a smart router looks at the ^aINTL line and then packages the
netmail for the proper next hop system based on the zones in the ^aINTL line...
there are some other parts that can or maybe should be used, too... FSC-0035
also comes to mind... it uses something similar to the old UUCP format where
the first line of the message body was

  TO: some user

when that part would not fit in the alloted 36 character To field in the
message header...

)\/(ark

Always Mount a Scratch Monkey
Do you manage your own servers? If you are not running an IDS/IPS yer doin' it
wrong...
... "Nollaig Chridheil agus Bliadhna Mhath Ur." - Gaelic-Scot Christmas
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