[nos-bbs] B2F (compression) success !!!

[Maiko Langelaar (ve4klm)]

Hi Steve,

> Sounds like your close...

It's coming along. I have a laptop, running AirMail client, connected
to a Halcomm DXP38 modem (pactor 1) that is directly WIRED (audio in
and out) to my KAM allmode, which in turn is connected to my JNOS test
system. I've been able to B2F forward from AirMail to JNOS with little
problems. It's pretty cool to see it work.

The next stage where I am at is to extract headers (and attachments)
from the B2F payload and properly set them up so JNOS delivers the
mail properly, and puts the attachment (if any) somewhere.

My biggest frustration right now is that if an FBB system connects
TO my JNOS system, and I give it a SID that has the B2F in it, it
*seems* to cause FBB to put in an additiona 2 bytes (CRC maybe?)
in front of the regular FBB compressed data stream, which mucks
things up. Aside from putting in a KLUDGE to look for FBB, the
only other alternative is to not advertise that I can support
the B2F for all incoming connects. Outgoing seems fine.

> JNOS will be able to forward the B2F compressed Airmail to
> the WL2K CMS servers ?

Perhaps this shows my ignorance, but compressed forwarding over
any telnet connection is doomed to failure in my opinion. Time and
time again I see the odd post where people are having trouble doing
compressed forwarding over a telnet session. The reason is the byte
value of 0xff in a TELNET session is an IAC (interpret as command)
trigger. IF the software (winlink, jnos, fbb, whatever) actually
interprets the IAC, then it is effectively removed from the data
stream, messes up the checksum, messes up the uncompressed data,
period.

I guess the question is - does the telpac software check for this ?

I don't know, be nice if someone can tell us how well compressed
B2F works over telpac. I suspect it actually does not interpret
the IAC, since telpac is not necessarily telnet (it's not a
terminal session, which looks for IAC stuff). IF that is the
case then I might have to modify the NOS code to ignore IAC
control stuff if I know it's a forwarding session, not a terminal
session, or along that line. Hope that makes sense.

Anyone else want to jump in ? I'm not necessarily an expert on this.

> What about being a local email server ? This is what the WL2K system
> is lacking.

NOS has always had the ability to deliver it's own mail. It does not
have to pass it to a central server. Or maybe I misunderstood the
question.

Maiko