FidoNet: Technology, Use, Tools, and History Randy Bush [email protected] Copyright 1992-3, Randy Bush. All rights reserved. FidoNet is a trademark of Tom Jennings. Abstract FidoNet is a point-to-point and store-and-forward email WAN which uses modems on the direct-dial telephone network. It was developed in 1984, and has over 20,000 public nodes worldwide. Although originally based on MS-DOS hosts, it has been ported to environments ranging from UNIX to the Apple //. There are gateways from FidoNet to the Internet, usually via the uucp network. Technical Overview The public FidoNet consists of over 20,000 nodes which move email and enews over the public telephone network using a unique protocol and data format. As the initial implementations were written for MS-DOS, DOS-based hosts are still the vast majority of the network.…