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FTS-0005.TXT
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1989-02-05
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FTS-0005
The Distribution Nodelist
Original by Ben Baker, 7:44/76@AlterNet
Amended by Rick Moore, 1:115/333@FidoNet
February 5, 1989
Copyright 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989 by the International FidoNet
Association. All rights reserved. Duplication and/or distribution
permitted for non-commercial purposes only.
This document supercedes and replaces the document known under the names
of FSC002, FSC-0002, and FTS-0002.
This document defines the format and content of the nodelist for the
Public FidoNet Network (PFN) as published each Friday.
The PFN is an international network of independently owned electronic
mail systems, most with interlocking electronic bulletin board systems.
The distribution nodelist, or simply "nodelist", is the glue which
holds the network together. It is the PFN's "phone book" and it defines
the top-level network structure.
The nodelist is published as an ASCII text file named NODELIST.nnn,
where nnn is the day-of-year of the Friday publication date. This file
is packed into an standard archive file (using System Enhancement
Associates' ARC file format) named NODELIST.Ann, where nn are the last
two digits of day-of-year.
A companion file, COORD.nnn, lists the coordinators of the various
regions and local networks which constitute the PFN. This file may be
created from NODELIST.nnn by the program COORD.EXE, distributed by many
PFN bulletin boards.
As stated above, NODELIST.nnn is an ASCII text file. It contains two
kinds of lines, comment lines and data lines. Each line is terminated
with an ASCII carriage return and line feed character sequence, and
contains no trailing white-space (spaces, tabs, etc.). The file is
terminated with an end-of-file character (EOF = decimal character value
26).
Comments lines contain a semicolon (;) in the first character position
followed by zero or more alphabetic characters called "interest flags".
A program which processes the nodelist may use comment interest flags to
determine the disposition of a comment line. The remainder of a comment
line (with one exception, treated below) is free-form ASCII text.
There are five interest flags defined as follows:
;S This comment is of particular interest to Sysops.
;U This comment is of particular interest to BBS users.
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;F This comment should appear in any formatted "Fido List".
;A This comment is of general interest (shorthand for ;SUF).
;E This comment is an error message inserted by the nodelist
generating program MakeNL.
; This comment may be ignored by a nodelist processor.
The first line of a nodelist is a special comment line containing
identification data for the particular edition of the nodelist. The
following is an example of the first line of a nodelist:
;A FidoNet Nodelist for Friday, July 3, 1987 --
Day number 184 : 15943
This line contains the general interest flag, the day, date, and
day-of-year number of publication, and ends with a 5-digit decimal
number with leading zeros, if necessary. This number is the decimal
representation of a check value derived as follows:
Beginning with the first character of the second line, a 16-bit
cyclic redundancy check (CRC) is calculated for the entire file,
including carriage return and line feed characters, but not
including the terminating EOF character. The check polynomial used
is the same one used for many file transfer protocols:
2**16 + 2**12 + 2**5 + 2**0
The CRC may be used to verify that the file has not been edited. The
importance of this will become evident in the discussion of NODEDIFF,
below. CRC calculation techniques are well documented in the
literature, and will not be treated further here.
The content of the remaining comments in the nodelist are intended to be
informative. Beyond the use of interest flags for distribution, a
processing program need not have any interest in them.
A nodelist data line contains eight variable length "fields" separated
by commas (,). No space characters are allowed in a data line, and
underscore characters are used in lieu of spaces. The term
"alphanumeric character" is defined as the portion of the ASCII
character set from 20 hex through 7E hex, inclusive. The following
discussion defines the contents of each field in a data line.
Field 1: Keyword
The keyword field may be empty, or may contain one of the following:
Zone --
Begins the definition of a geographic zone and define its
coordinator. All the data lines following a line with the
"Zone" keyword down to, but not including, the next
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occurrence of a "Zone" keyword, are regions, networks, and
nodes within the defined zone.
Region --
Begins the definition of a geographic region and defines its
coordinator. All the data lines following a line with the
"Region" keyword down to, but not including, the next
occurrence of a "Zone", "Region", or "Host" keyword, are
independent nodes within the defined region.
Host --
Begins the definition of a local network and defines its host.
All the data lines following a line with the Host keyword down
to, but not including, the next occurrence of a "Zone",
"Region", or "Host" keyword, are local nodes, members of
the defined local network.
Hub --
Begins the definition of a routing subunit within a multilevel
local network. The hub is the routing focal point for nodes
listed below it until the next occurrence of a "Zone",
"Region", "Host", or "Hub" keyword. The hub entry MUST be a
redundant entry, with a unique number, for one of the nodes
listed below it. This is necessary because some nodelist
processors eliminate these entries in all but the local
network.
Pvt --
Defines a private node with unlisted number. Private nodes
are only allowed as members of local networks.
Hold --
Defines a node which is temporarily down. Mail may be sent to
it and is held by its host or coordinator.
Down --
Defines a node which is not operational. Mail may NOT be sent
to it. This keyword may not be used for longer than two weeks
on any single node, at which point the "down" node is to be
removed from the nodelist.
<empty> --
Defines a normal node entry.
Field 2 - Zone/Region/Net/Node number
This field contains only numeric digits and is a number in the
range of 0 to 32767. If the line had the "Zone", "Region", or
"Host" keyword, the number is the zone, net, or region number,
and the node has an implied node number of 0. Otherwise, the
number is the node number. The zone number, region or net number,
and the node number, taken together, constitute a node's FidoNet
address.
Zone numbers must be unique. Region or net numbers must be unique
within their zone. Hub numbers must be within their net. Node
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numbers must be unique within their region (for regional
independents) or net (for members of a local network). Duplicate
node numbers under different hubs within the same net are not
allowed.
Field 3 - Node name
This field may contain any alphanumeric characters other than
commas and spaces. Underscores are used to represent spaces. This
is the name by which the node is known.
Field 4 - Location
This field may contain any alphanumeric characters other than
commas and spaces