5 The nodelist and the nodelist compiler

 The nodelist is FrontDoor's telephone directory listing and is used
 for several purposes. Among these are to allow you to perform name
 lookups of other SysOps, to retrieve information about remote
 systems, such as the maximum supported baud rate, modem flags, and
 system capability flags, to check if a remote system is known to your
 system or should be treated as an unlisted system.

 FD requires that a nodelist be present whereas FM and the Terminal
 can both be used without one, if so required. The typical FidoNet
 nodelist contains over 10.000 systems and has a fairly straight
 forward structure as follows.

     Zone    Usually a large geographical area, such as North America,
             Europe, Australia and New Zealand, etc. At the time of
             the release of this package, the following FidoNet Zone
             numbers have been allocated:

                 1   North America (including Canada)
                 2   Europe
                 3   Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand
                 4   Latin America
                 5   Africa
                 6   Asia

     Region  Usually a somewhat smaller geographical area, such as a
             country or part of a (large) country. A collection of
             regions make up one zone.

     Net     Usually a collection of systems local to each other.
             Typically a city and in some cases including its suburbs.
             A collection of nets make up one region.

     Node    A single system within a net.

     Point   A single system belonging to a node. Typically, a point
             is similar to a user logging on to a BBS system using
             his/her terminal program, with the main difference being
             that a point performs most of his/her activities offline
             and use smart software to collect and transit his/her
             mail.