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4.4.1 How to properly address an Internet Gateway

There are various ways of designing Fidonet to Internet gateways. The most common is the Gatebau standard, which among others is implemented in the excellent gateway software Fidogate by Martin Junius. You can find more information about Fidogate at http://www.fido.de. Various other gateway programs more or less conform to this standard as well.

Addressing a Gatebau compatible gateway works like this: The gateway has its own node- or point number. When you wish to write an e-mail using a standard Fidonet editor, you have to address your netmail to this gateway node number. As receiver’s name, you can use the real name of the receiver, or you can use ‘UUCP’, if the real name of the receiver is unknown. Some not-so-smart gateway software requires that you always use ‘UUCP’ as receiver’s name. - In order to tell the gateway the e-mail address that the mail should be delivered to, the very first line of your message must contain the e-mail address of the receiver, preceded by ‘To:’. The e-mail address can be specified in three different forms. Here are three possible first lines of gateway-addressed netmails:

To: juser@somedomain.com
To: juser@somedomain.com (Joe User)
To: Joe User <juser@somedomain.com>

The last of these forms is not supported by some older gateway software. - The ‘To:’-line must be followed by an empty line, and then you can begin with your message text. A complete e-mail addressed to an internet gateway at ‘2:99/999.0’ could look this:

==========Message Header==================
From:    Bill Sysop, 2:99/123.0
To:      UUCP, 2:99/999.0
Subject: This is a test e-mail
==========Message Body====================
To: juser@somedomain.com (Joe User)

Hello Joe!

This is a test.

Regards,
Bill.

Receiving e-mail from the gateway is similar: You receive an e-mail from the gateway node or point, and in the mail boday, the first line will contain a ‘From:’-line which designates the e-mail address the mail was from. Sometins, the ‘From:’-line is followed by a ‘Reply-to:’ line, which indicates that the sender wishes to receive any answers at the e-mail address shown in the ‘Reply-to:’-line rather than at the e-mail address shown in the ‘From:’-line. Here is an example:

==========Message Header========================
From:    Joe User, 2:99/999.0
To:      Bill Sysop, 2:99/123.0
Subject: Re: This is a test e-mail
==========Message Body==========================
From: Joe User <joe@some-machine.somedomain.com>
Reply-To: Joe User <juser@somedomain.com>

Hello Bill!

I received your test e-mail without problems.

Regards,
Joe.

This interface works with every stone-age Fidonet editor, but it is clumsy. When replying to an e-mail that came through a gateway, for example, you would have to remember the sender’s e-mail address, and when writing the reply, you would have to manually insert a correct ‘To:’-line, just to name one problem.

Therefore, MsgEd TE can do the work for you. If properly configured, MsgEd TE will to the job of interpreting and inserting ‘From:’, ‘Reply-To:’ and ‘To:’ lines. With gateway support turned on, writing an e-mail with MsgEd TE is just as easy as writing a fidonet netmail. In the following, we will see how to configure MsgEd TE for gateway support and how to use these features.


Next: How to configure MsgEd TE to use an Internet Gateway, Previous: Internet Gateways - Using MsgEd TE for e-mail and newsgroups, Up: Internet Gateways - Using MsgEd TE for e-mail and newsgroups   [Index]