Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!ncrcan!brian
From: brian@ncrcan.Toronto.NCR.COM (Brian A. Onn)
Newsgroups: tor.news
Subject: Re: CanConfMail
Message-ID: <1684@ncrcan.Toronto.NCR.COM>
Date: 15 Nov 89 01:03:07 GMT
References: <1989Nov13.055204.22757@telly.on.ca>
Reply-To: brian@ncrcan.Toronto.NCR.COM (Brian A. Onn)
Distribution: tor
Organization: NCR Canada Ltd., Mississauga, Ontario
Lines: 143

In article <1989Nov13.055204.22757@telly.on.ca> evan@telly.on.ca (Evan Leibovitch) writes:
>ORIGIN:
>
>As I understand it, CanConfMail is a network of a number of Canadian and
>U.S. PC-based Bulletin Boards that have not gone into Fidonet.
>It appears that the largest member (by far) is Canada Remote Systems.

CanConfMail originated when CRS was not chosen as the "Super Regional Hub"
for the (then) largest PCBoard network in North America, which had it's
number one node in Memphis, Tenn.  I think this was Smartnet, but can't
remember exactly.  When the job of Super-Regional went to Rose Media BBS
(another large system in Toronto, with approx. 60 nodes), CRS (IMHO) got
ticked, created CanConfMail, and enticed other Canadian BBS's to join,
with CRS as the CanConfMail hub.

>There seem to be three or more actual nets in use that I can discern:
>Quicknet, Relaynet and Smartnet (though I can't yet make out the
>connections - or the differences - between them).

I am not sure of the differences either, but they are all PCBoard based
systems, usually organized in a star configuration (or multiple stars)
with gateways at various sites.

>HEADERS:
>
>Regardless of where the message actually came from, the return address
>and "Organization:" header (for the purpose of Usenet) reads only Canada
>Remote Systems. Some of the messages broadcast their actual point of
>origin on the bottom of the message - I don't believe it's a good
>assumption that all unmarked articles (the majority) are from CRS.

This is a limitation of the PCBoard network software.  There is no 
information propagated with the message to construct a valid return 
address from.  Same for organization.   Some BBS's tag each outgoing
original message with a BBS name, others do not.  Also, the tag is 
inserted into the body of the message, not in any header, so it is
difficult to extract.

>The "From:" header says "firstname.lastname@canremote.UUCP", regardless
>of which site originated the message. I don't know if e-mail to a person
>at Zooman's Zoo BBS would get correctly routed. I also don't know if
>Usenet postings to these groups will get back into CRS.

Not knowing the implementation of the MasNet software, I can't say for
sure if the scenario below is what really happens, but...

it is important to note here that the CanConfMail network (and any other
PC based BBS network, to the best of my knowledge) is strictly broadcast
oriented.  PCBoard networks have a concept of Conferences, some of 
which are 'echoed' and others which are not.   Conferences have numbers
associated with them, and (for example) the IBM PC conference is often a
different conference number on each BBS system that carries it.  Everything
is a message, and there is a concept of private and public messages,
although to be honest I am not certain how this is handled.  The limitations
of the system are immense.  Every user is identified by a first name, last
name pair.  There are users on CRS (and I am sure other boards) that have
had to change the spelling of their names to use the system.  (ie, if there
were 3 "BRIAN ONN"'s in Toronto (god forbid :-)), then the first one 
would log in as BRIAN ONN, the second BRYAN ONN, and the third BRIEN ONN.)

If you sent a message to STEVE SMITH inside an echoed conference, then
every STEVE SMITH on every BBS in the network would get notification 
of the message for him.   Also, if it's public, then everyone else can 
read it as well.  I am not sure if private messages posted to an echoed
conference are actually echoed as private messages.  From the point 
of view of the PCBoard software, this would mean that every BBS 
would have to carry the (private) message for potentially no reader.

I would suspect that the MasNet software takes ccm.* postings and injects
them into the appropriate conference as a public message on CRS.  This
would permit the message to be echoed to other BBS's and PCBoard networks.
When acting as a gateway for private mail for first.last@canremote.UUCP,
I would suspect that the MasNet software would turn the mail message into
a public message and inject it into an echoed conference on CRS.  The
problem with mail, however, is that unless the mail header indicates
which conference contained the original message to which you are replying,
I don't see how the message can get injected into an echo system properly.
The only alternative would be to choose a default conference to inject 
into when the mail header does not indicate an appropriate conference.
In the case of mailing a reply using rn's 'r' or 'R' command, then the
Newsgroups: line is conveniently included in the mail header.

>It is a serious drawback that messages coming in from this network has
>no distribution. This makes it more difficult to alias ccm groups into
>their equivalent Usenet groups (why should a person reading news have to
>choose whether to post to comp.dcom.telecom or ccm.hayes?)
>
>My preference would be that the Organization: header contain the name of
>the system originating the message, not CRS, and that messages contain a
>header "Distribution: ccm". Would this be difficult?

I should think that adding a Distribution line to the headers when they
leave tmsoft should not be a problem.  This is probably easily fixed.  
Organization is more difficult, as mentioned above.

>CONTENT:
>
>... There appear to be a noticable amount of broadcast stuff
>that is really not appropriate for re-transmission (like CRS internal
>policy statements or the CRS sysop telling a questioner "yeah, I
>can get that for ya cheap."

I have noticed this as well, being a member of CRS.  I feel that this
is really the fault of the software used to post messages.  The software
defaults to a public message, and the user has to make an effort to make 
the message private.  As a result, most messages are public, to the effect
that you get stuff like "Hey, Johnny, do you want to go out tonight?" and
its reply.  I once spent time on CRS going through about 20 messages between
two CRS members in an echoed conference!

>Other things I've noticed is shareware authors unabashedly plugging
>their stuff, and lots of PC hardware discussions. Lots of people apparently
>like to tell the world what they're using and why they love it, even if
>nobody wants to know.

:-)  Yeah, a different crowd, I suppose.  As for shareware stuff, there
are many conferences that are strictly set up as Shareware Support 
Conferences.  Most of the shareware authors are good about pointing out that
discussions re: his product should be moved to the appropriate support
conference, where the talk is welcomed.

>There are many "Re:..." subject lines but no references to previous articles
>and sparse use of quoting.

Another limitation of the software.  Messages are stored as a message
number on the local system.  When you reply to a message, the reference is
only one message back, and is meaningful only to the local system.  So
a reference number of 15540 on one system refers to an entirely 
different message when taken in the context of another system.  Quoting 
is only a recent development on BBS's, having become more popular
since the advent of off-line message readers.

All in all, I think that the PCBoard software must become more 
mature before much advancement can be made here.  For the time being,
they are better off in there own ccm.* groups.

Brian.

-- 
 +-------------------+-----------------------------------------------------+
 | Brian Onn         | UUCP: ..!uunet!attcan!ncrcan!brian                  |
 | NCR Canada Ltd.   | INTERNET: Brian.Onn@Toronto.NCR.COM                 |
 +-------------------+-----------------------------------------------------+