As a sysop I've often been asked "I know how to send a bulletin to everyone at a BBS, but how do I send a bulletin to everyone in xxxxxx". xxxxxx might be a large city in Europe, a state in America or the whole of Australia. Sometimes it's to trace relatives in the area, other times to find out details for a forthcoming holiday in that part of the world. Whatever the reason people often want to address bulletins to different regions This question must obviously be on the minds of many users. How often do you see messages to 'ALL @ EU' or even worse, 'ALL @ WW' where someone is trying to attract the attention of users in just a small area of Europe or the world Whenever I am asked I normally recommend that my users send a message to a BBS sysop in the relevant area asking if they will re-distribute the message as a bulletin using a local bulletin grouping. This has been tried and sometimes it works. I guess that most sysops will help if possible, but it does add yet another job to the already busy sysop's life Some people say that it's possible to send bulletins to countries using the relevant hierarchical address, but apart from leaving a 'snail trail' of unwanted bulletins behind at each BBS that forwards the bulletin it also worries me because I don't know for certain that all countries forward based on the hierarchical address for the country. In the UK we DO forward based on our country address (GBR), but I've seen people using '@ USA.NA and I think I've heard that in America the correct address is 'ALLUS' or USABBS The REDIST server for the F6FBB BBS software now solves that problem. It allows users to address a personal message to a server at a remote BBS which will translate it into a bulletin to be forwarded using one of a number of local areas defined by the remote BBS sysop. The sender can choose the approximate size of area for the bulletin by sending the message to the correct server I have recently heard that a REDIST compatible server is to be released for use with the W0RLI BBS software. Unfortunately I am not able to build a list of W0RLI-type BBSs that support the server, so I can't guarantee where you can use it
