What is Fidonet and what is its relationship with Japan_Link?
Fidonet is a non-profit international network of BBSes (Bulletin Board Systems). Services include a private messaging system (“NetMail”), a conferencing system (“EchoMail”) and file distribution/request system. These are analogous to “email”, “newsgroups” and “ftp”, respectively. Before the Internet really took off, Fidonet was quite large (over 50,000 nodes) largely run by volunteer “sysops” (system operators) from their homes or offices. It was, in its heyday, the worlds largest distribution channel for freeware and shareware. In theory, Fidonet is a part of the Internet, since the Internet is a “network of networks” of which Fidonet is one such network. In practical terms, however, Fidonet does not support TCP/IP so email is the only Internet feature that works between the Internet and Fidonet. Even then, the software used is quite different and quite a bit of translation has to take place to pass messages between Fidonet and the internet. Japan_Link is a Fidonet Echo forum. It is d
