Peter Anvin 181:181/10@stormnet International Internet Coordinator hostmaster@storm.net All about the... STORMNET INTERNET GATEWAY Hi everyone! In an effort to try to clear up some misunderstandings about the Stormnet/Internet connection, as well as meet Alan's ultimatum to put an article in Stormnews, here is all about it. If you plan to use it, please read this article. *** WHAT IS THE INTERNET? *** The Internet is a worldwide conglomeration of networks. It currently has an estimated 40 million users [in mid-1994 -hpa], and the number is growing rapidly. Most Internet email addresses have the form: user@hostname ... where the host name is composed of hierarchial "domains", written with the topmost (largest) domain to the right. For example, take the user address: hpa@ahab.eecs.nwu.edu "hpa" is the user, in this case a login name on a UNIX machine. "ahab" is the machine name. "eecs" is a some form of organizational subunit, in this case the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. "nwu" is Northwestern University, and "edu" is a top-level category for colleges and universities. In many cases, especially outside the USA, the top-level category is a 2-letter abbreviation for the country name. Different systems use sometimes different forms for the local (user) part of the address; the only thing common is pretty much that Internet addresses in general cannot contain spaces or any of \%!:,@"'()<> as these characters have special meanings to the network. Some addresses are of the form gateway2!gateway3!host!user@gateway1 or user%host%gateway3%gateway2@gateway1 They both indicate the user "user" on machine "host", but also specifies the way the mail needs to take to get there. This used to be required when sending mail to a host which was not connected directly to the Internet, but nowadays most such systems gets registered in the Internet tables with a pointer (called an MX record) to a system that knows how to get the mail where is needs to go, eliminating such hassles. *** SO HOW DO I RECEIVE MAIL FROM THE INTERNET? *** If you can receive Stormnet mail, you can receive Internet mail. However, your recipient will probably not know what to do with a Stormnet address, so you will need to translate it to Internet format. Stormnet is registered with the Internet Network Information Center as the domain "storm.net". Hence, all Stormnet addresses ends that way. In addition, rather than using numbers for zones, Stormnet uses the subdomains "usa", "can", "eur", "asia" and "lam" for zones 181 to 185. So, assume your BBS login name is "Arthur Dent". Your Internet address would look like this, depending on your BBS Stormnet address: BBS Stormnet Your Internet address (example) address ----------------- ------------- 181:294/101 Arthur.Dent@f101.n294.usa.storm.net 181:201/666.6 Arthur.Dent@p6.f666.n294.usa.storm.net 182:101/21 Arthur.Dent@f21.n101.can.storm.net 182:221/4.106 Arthur.Dent@p106.f4.n221.can.storm.net 183:1831/0 Arthur.Dent@f0.n1831.eur.storm.net 184:184/1.2 Arthur.Dent@p2.f1.n184.asia.storm.net 185:101/42 Arthur.Dent@f42.n185.lam.storm.net ... you get the idea. The general format is: @f.n..storm.net for full hosts and @p.f.n..storm.net for points. Note that the space in the user name gets replaced by a period. If you have a period in your user name, or any of the special characters \%!:,@"'()<>_ you will probably not be able to use Internet mail. It is a good idea to tell users to use only letters, numbers, spaces and hyphens (-) in their login names, unless your BBS already restricts this. Those characters are guaranteed to be safe. *** BUT THAT ADDRESS IS SO UGLY!! *** Well, tough. Actually, there is hope. I have started registering "vanity names" for systems that request it. Currently, the following "vanity names" have been registered as of 1995-09-09: 181:181/1 iec.storm.net 181:181/2 inc.storm.net 181:192/101 ic.storm.net 181:181/10 storm.net 181:181/0 zc.usa.storm.net 181:192/104 ham-net.usa.storm.net 181:1816/0 aatwbbs.usa.storm.net 181:192/110 kbcbbs.usa.storm.net 181:421/0 outpost.usa.storm.net 181:478/2 shrine.usa.storm.net 181:292/4 boss.usa.storm.net 181:275/0 nflite.usa.storm.net 181:273/0 ck.usa.storm.net 181:293/4 mousetrap.usa.storm.net 181:192/113 fmhs-bbs.usa.storm.net 181:292/12 horizons.usa.storm.net 181:192/111 zephyr.usa.storm.net 181:412/1 eternal.usa.storm.net 181:192/115 unity.usa.storm.net 181:323/0 badger.usa.storm.net 181:196/1 swp.usa.storm.net 181:192/126 wolf.usa.storm.net 181:292/7 enterprize3.usa.storm.net 182:182/0 zc.can.storm.net 182:1820/0 hwystar.can.storm.net 182:403/4300 noidden.can.storm.net 182:402/4102 pandora.can.storm.net 182:240/2400 envisage.can.storm.net 183:183/0 zc.eur.storm.net 183:200/110 turbosoft.eur.storm.net 183:201/3 digital.eur.storm.net 183:203/1002 lms.eur.storm.net 183:300/11 blackhole.eur.storm.net 184:184/0 zc.asia.storm.net 185:185/0 zc.lam.storm.net To register a vanity name, send a message to me at 181:181/10 **ONLY**, stating your choice(s) of host names. I will assign names in a strict first-come-first-serve order, so you may want to indicate several choices in order of preference. I also reserve the right to reject hostnames for whatever reasons. All "vanity names" (except international coordinators) will be of the form ..storm.net. Requests by anything than NETMAIL FROM *YOUR* *STORMNET* NODE to 181:181/10 (including if it comes from your Fido address -- about 1/4 of all requests I get are this way!) will be ignored. Also, I will reject your request if your software sends out invalid FTN domain names (see below); I don't have time to correct broken software for you. If you have both a coordinator address (.../0) and a "normal" address, your "normal" address is the one you should use. The coordinator address can also apply for a hostname, but it should be appropriate for the function of that address, e.g. 181:294/0 could be "nc-chicago.usa.storm.net". Here is some advice on how to pick a hostname: 1. A hostname must consist of only letters a-z (by convention lower case, but it is case-insensitive), digits 0-9 and hyphens (-). NO OTHER CHARACTERS. Also, at least one character has to be a letter, and hyphens should only be used (instead of spaces) as word separators. 2. Keep'em short. I suggest keeping it in the 4-8 character range, and I strongly advise you to keep it below 14 characters. I will probably reject something longer than that, unless there is an obvious good reason for it. 3. Putting "bbs" in the name is usually pretty redundant. That's usually three characters you can use better. 4. Your name must not conflict with the default seminumeric names, nor with any of the zone names, coordinators, or domain names ("storm", "net"). *** SO HOW DO I SEND MAIL TO THE INTERNET? *** So much about receiving mail from the Internet. How do you send it? The easiest way is to use your recipient's Internet address as the recipient name in the FTN "To" field, and send it to any host in the Stormnet nodelist which is marked with the GUUCP flag. Currently only 181:181/10 is marked GUUCP, but that might change. So, for example, if you want to send to (the <> are not a part of the address, but is a common way to bracket Internet addresses) you would send it: To: luser@state.edu Address: 181:181/10 Unfortunately, the FTN "To" field is limited to 35 characters. Some Internet addresses can be very long, unfortunately. If so, send it to "UUCP" at any GUUCP node, with the line: To: J-Random-Luser@somewhere.somehow.megacorp.com (or whatever the recipient's Internet address is) as the VERY first line in the message, followed by a blank line. Don't put a blank line before it; it will not work. *** SOME WORDS ON DOMAINS *** Unfortunately, there is some confusing in the FidoNet Technology community what a "domain" really means. There are Internet domains and FTN domains, and they are **NOT** the same thing. An Internet domain is a period-separated set of words that are registered with the Internet Domain Naming System (DNS), usually (but not always) under the auspices of the Internet Network Information Center (InterNIC). Stormnet, for example, uses "storm.net". A FTN domain is a *single word* that is used to disambiguate zones between different Fidonet Technology Networks. The Stormnet FTN domain is "stormnet", as in "181:181/10@stormnet". Unfortunately, some sysops (and software authors!) have been confused on this issue. Part of the reason is that FidoNet itself uses the Internet domain "fidonet.org", which can be stripped to the FTN domain "fidonet". In particular, the FrontDoor documentation, as well as possibly other software packages, tells you to put in "the full domain, for example fidonet.org". ==> FRONTDOOR WILL GENERATE ILLEGAL ADDRESSES IF YOU DO SO!! <== Put just in the FTN domain, for example, "fidonet", "stormnet", and you will be correct. If you think that the author of FrontDoor ought to know what he is doing, it should be pointed out that several (most?) versions of FrontDoor violates key points of the official EMSI specification, and FrontDoor was written by the same guy who wrote the EMSI spec. Also, the Hydra spec, also by the same person, in one place mentions "... the same scheme as used by UNIX uuencode ...", and goes on to describe a scheme which is similar to, but completely incompatible with UNIX uuencode due to an off-by-one error. Go figure. *** RESTRICTIONS ON TRAFFIC *** I run the Stormnet Internet gate at my own expense on my own time. In addition, Alan Jurison pays for the uplink to the IHUB IHUB in New York (I am in California) out of his own pocket. Hence, I am asking that you don't pass any of the following types of traffic, as it would possibly very fast either flood my pretty sluggish Internet link, or give Alan some serious financial problem -- either of which could mean the closing of the gateway. * Binary files, * Mailing lists, * Any other machine-generated or mass mailings. If you really want to get any of these, contact me and we may be able to make arrangements. Also, the following types of traffic are prohibited; no exceptions will be made: * Commercial (for-profit) traffic and * Harassing, illegal, or otherwise socially unacceptable mail. If your system violates the Internet gate rules, it will be blocked from receiving mail from the Internet and/or send mail out. Serious cases will be forwarded to the Stormnet Advisory Council (SNAC) for possible diciplinary action. Thanks for checking this message out. It may have been long and boring, but it is important nontheless. Sincerely, H. Peter Anvin Stormnet International Internet Coordinator