Gateway Settings

The gateway is the path messages take when they have to be sent from UUCP to FidoNet or vice versa. The message body is translated to the new format and the headers (from, to, subject, date, etc.) have to be translated as well. WaterGate does this all automatically.

There are a few settings you can tune, almost all of which have to do with addressing the gateway and translating addresses. "The Gateway", below, will explain how to use the gateway and how to set up mappings, which are address translation helpers.

You can reach the Gateway Settings screen via the System Settings menu. That screen looks like this:

Gateway Settings

The screen is split up in three parts, related to the direction of the gateway on which the option has effect.

Gateway AKA

This is not the node number on which the gateway can be reached from within FidoNet. In fact, you and your users can reach the gateway on any of your system node numbers.

The gateway AKA is used to calculate what parts of an FidoNet address need to be put in the domain part of the resulting Internet address. It is also used to restore this complete node number on the way back.

For example: 

Gateway             = 2:280/802
Sender              = "xx" at 2:280/802
First system domain = wsd.wline.se
-> Result           = xx@p15.wsd.wline.se
On the way back: 
Incoming            = xx@p15.wsd.wline.se
Gateway             = 2:280/802
-> Result           = "xx" at 2:280/802.15
Notice that this information is not used when mapping statements are in effect (MAP-UUCP).

It is perfectly valid to use a point address for the gateway node number.

Gateway User

In order for WaterGate to know that a message must go through the gateway, you have to tell it what username will appear in the To: field of netmail messages destined for the gateway. The default is UUCP, a common choice, but it can be changed to anything.

You have to put the recipient address (of the person which is to receive your e-mail) on the first line of the body of the message, preceded by "To:" (case insensitive).

Gateway TO

If the option "Gateway TO" is set to YES, WaterGate also scans the To: field of the netmail for a UUCP address. In that case, you don't have to put the UUCP address on the first line of the body of the message, but you can then simply put it in the To: field of the FidoNet message, provided the entire address fits in the To: field.

Kill gated netmail

If you write a message in the netmail area that has to be sent to UUCP, you may want it to remain there after it has been sent so you can move it to another area (history, for example). If you don't want it to stay in the netmail area after gating it, you can put the Kill/Sent flag on it with your editor.

If one of your points or downlinks sends a netmail to the gateway and he or she does not put a Kill/Sent flag on the message, this message will remain in your netmail area after it has been gated. After a while, these messages pile up.

If you set this toggle to YES, all netmails that were gated to UUCP are automatically given a Kill/Sent flag, so WaterGate deletes them after gating. This keeps your netmail area free of already gated messages.

FSC-35 kludges

If a message is translated from UUCP to FidoNet, you have to be able to reply to it from within your editor. This can be done in several ways. The newer editors support FSC-35, which makes replying to a message from UUCP very simple. Two kludges are added to the message: REPLYTO and REPLYADDR. The first contains the AKA and username of the gateway and the second holds the Internet address of the sender of the message (that's where the reply has to go).

If there are more than one possible reply address, then WaterGate creates one or more REPLYALSO kludges as well, but there are no editors at this moment to support these kludges and present you with a list of return addresses to select from.

Fido From:

If your editor does not support FSC-35, you have to reply to the message by manually putting the UUCP address on the first line of the message. But since WaterGate is also capable of finding the recipient's address in the Fido To: field, it would be handy if it was in the From: field of the message you are going to reply to. Your editor will then automatically setup a message from you to whatever was in the From: field. If this is the complete Internet address, you are done and don't need to type anything more. Set this option to "e-mail address" if you want this.

If the e-mail address does not fit in the To: field of the message, WaterGate automatically puts the address of the sender in the body of the message, preceded by "Message Sender:".

If your editor does support FSC-35, you don't need the UUCP address in the From: field of the message. Some addresses are very ugly to look at and it would be much nicer if the full name of the sender of the message was in this field, as with normal FidoNet messages. If you set the option "Fido From:" to "full name", WaterGate puts the full name of the sender of the UUCP message in the From: field.

If you want the full name of the sender in the From: field and the address in the body of the message, you have to use Copy Headers.

Copy Headers

A UUCP messages contains several "header" lines. If a message is gated to a FidoNet message, these headers are lost, unless you use this option. You have to put the cursor on this field in the "Gateway Settings" screen and then press Enter to change the settings. You will then see the following screen:

Copy Headers

The left column holds the header name to search for (case insensitive) and the right column tells what to do with it. You can have to copied to the netmail or echomail as a kludge line or as plain text, or don't copy at all.

Of the 30 entries you can make, a set of common header lines have already been set up. You can change them, delete them and add some more.

WaterGate searches for the header line with a space appended to it. This is important, because "From" and "From:" are different headers and we don't necessarily want to match both. Also, don't forget the terminating colon (':') after the header name!

Note: There is a known problem with Remote Access together with BlueWave. When you download messages with BlueWave, you can get a number of empty lines before the actually message body starts. This has to do with too long headers that were copied as kludges. It is assumed that the bug lies within Remote Access. If you experience this problem, then check on the headers you copy as kludges.

ASCII conversion

High ASCII characters (values >128) are widely used within FidoNet, but are illegal in plain text messages on the Internet. WaterGate will replace those characters when converting a message into UUCP format using a conversion table.

You can specify an appropriate "low ASCII" value for each "high ASCII" value. For example, characters with an umlaut can be replaced with their equivalent without the umlaut.

To support computers that are using a different high ASCII table than the Latin one used in most American and European computers, you can use the 'ASCII conversion' option to re-define the default table. If you mess up the table really bad, then you can press F5 to restore the default table.

WaterGate cannot convert one-letter characters to two letters. Future version will support different character sets (supporting the CHRS kludge) and multi-character translation.

Message-ID to MSGID conversion

This option allows transparant gating of Message-ID headers into FidoNet and back again. The contents of the Message-ID header will be put in the MSGID kludge of the Fido message and recovered when a reply is sent.

Some tossers cannot handle this irregular, but completely legal format and might even crash. Use NO if you experience problems or use INCLUDE if you want to be a completely transparent gateway.

Notice that WaterGate always puts the MSGID and REPLY kludges in a Message-ID: or In-Reply-To: header (FidoNet to Internet/Usenet). You only control the other direction with this toggle.

Organization to Origin conversion

With this option you can tell WaterGate to gate the Organization: header from a news message into the Origin line of the resulting echomail.

Since you can also use Copy Headers to copy the Organization: line into the body of a gated message, you can override that option for echomail here.

Set this toggle to NO to disable the function. Set it to YES to always put the Organization: header in the Origin line and use OVERRIDE to disable the Copy Headers entry for the Organization: header when using this option.

You can edit language entry 105 to configure how the Organization: header is gated into the Origin.

Name separator

The name separator is used to convert Fido names to names compatible with UUCP systems. It replaces all spaces in the Fido user name with the character you configure here.

Examples (replacement character is underscore '_'): 

        "Jaap Aap"
  ->    Jaap_Aap@...

        "Ramon van der Winkel"
  ->    Ramon_van_der_Winkel@...

        "Michel van.der.Laan"
  ->    Michel_van.der.Laan@...
The default is to use the underscore ('_'), because some BBS users still use dots ('.') to separate the parts of their names, as in the last example. The problem with those names is not the translation _to_ UUCP, but _from_ UUCP. If the last example was translated with a dot, it would be "Michel.van.der.Laan". If that is translated back, you get "Michel van der Laan", instead of "Michel van.der.Laan".

Small addresses

The small addresses option is used to keep the result of translating a Fido addresses into a UUCP address as small as possible. If WaterGate has to put the sender's FidoNet address in a UUCP address, it creates an address with this format:

p<point>.f<node>.n<net>.z<zone>.<first system domain address>

For example: 2:280/802.33 -> p33.f802.n280.z2.wlink.nl

But a lot of this information is actually unnecessary if your gateway AKA closely matches this address, for example 2:280/802.

If "Small Addresses" is set to YES, WaterGate removes all the parts of the Fido address that match, so the result would then be:

p33.wlink.nl

Your system's points are just

user@p<pointnr>.wlink.nl

and that is a lot better-looking than the complete, big address.

When a message is received from UUCP in the form above, the Gateway AKA is again used to reconstruct the full FidoNet recipient's address.

Note that if your gateway AKA contains a point number, this point number is ignored when constructing the complete address. Otherwise the point number would always be in the recipient's address (also if that is a node), if it was not in the UUCP address. So, you can safely use a point number for your gateway.

Back to Table of Contents or continue to the next section.

Comments or questions? Send an e-mail to editor@wsd.wline.se.

Last updated 13 October 1996