On 05/24/16, g00r00 said the following...

I think that you are way over thinking this. I'm not talking about having one echo be gated between multiple networks. I'm talking abou having an echo be gated between ONE FTN network and ONE QWK network.

You're right I *am* overthinking it, if I am only concerned with your request.

Fair enough.. big picture and what not.

How does QWKPOLL maintain the list of whats been sent and what hasn't I'm assuming it uses the user's last read pointer. I'm sure I could wrong on that, but I just assume that that is how it does it. Does QWKPOLL touch the FTN sent flag?

It sounds like you are thinking of a very basic situation as a node in a QWK network only, which makes sense because thats how you want to use
it. But your use case isn't the same as everyone else's.

Where do last readpointers fit in when you have this situation:

QWK_BBS_1
|
|
BBS_2 ---'
| |
BBS_3 BBS_4

In this scenario you are BBS_2.

BBS_3 and BBS_4 have QWK users on your BBS which use lastread pointers
to get and put messages. Thats fine and is what you are describing. BBS_2 has a QWK user on BBS_1 and that is how they get messages from BBS_1...

But how does BBS_2 know what to send to BBS_1? It doesn't because there is no system in place to track that information. I think most QWK networks operate by only having a single HUB that everyone connects to
and in that case your situation works...

Yes, I think that that is a limitaton of the QWK network. I don't know of
any QWK networks that are not star networks; ie 1 hub and many nodes.

But having the entire network die because a single system goes down
isn't great design, and Mystic's QWK system is more powerful than that
in that it can work more like FidoNet with multiple nodes and hubs.

FWIW, I think that what you are thinking of is something that is outside the bounds of QWK networking. So for such a concept, QWK just isn't ideal, and I get why you are noodling on ways to make the message networking more robust. But I don't think that 'improving' QWK networking is the proper path for
that goal. QWK networking should prolly be left as it is, to do what it does best. So message routing concerns and methods should prolly not include QWK nets.

Remember when Mystic was banned in DoveNet for sending massive amount of messages? Thats what happens when you use lastread pointers!

I remember stories, and I was a part of Dovenet at that time too, using Mystic's QWKnet instead of YAQN, so I should have been affected by it. I
even logged on to vert and asked DM about whether or not he was blocking
Mystic BBSes from dovenet. In his brief response, he acted like he didn't
know what I was talking about. Was he being strait with me? Who knows.

If someone moves data files they shouldn't, or restores a backup of the user database, or there is a bug in the lastread pointer in the
software, or a 3rd message base packer incorrectly packs things, or any number of scenarios in which those last read pointers change...

The end result is Mystic dumps every single message to the uplink, and
Rob bans Mystic BBS from using DoveNet! :)

Again, I heard stories of that, but I never got banned, so far as I know.
But yeah, that would suck.

I could change it to not allow middleman systems and have the single
point of failure, and then what you are describing would work. Is that what you think is best?

Well, like I said, I've only known QWK networks to be star networks. Yes, I see the limitations; the hub goes down, and then the whole netowrk goes down. So eliminating middleman systems is prolly prudent. But I would wonder how
you would do that. What means could you use to prevent middlemen?

If so we could use FSXNET to test a QWK networking interface to it, if Paul wanted to do that. The understand would have to be with EVERYONE that ANY BBS on that network doing the testing cannot be using QWK networking for anything else though...

This is needed so that if we somehow flood messages its not going to happen to DoveNet which will end up with Rob banning Mystic BBS from DoveNet again.

TBH, my commitment level on this is pretty much nil. I myself don't plan on ever using it, but other sysops might. I brought this up only as an offering of how somebody wanted to move messages from one of his systems to a second one, with a minimum of fuss.

"No matter where you go, there you are!" - Buckaroo Bonzai

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A14 (Raspberry Pi)
* Origin: Cyberia BBS | Cyberia.Darktech.Org | Kingwood, TX