[nos-bbs] how to reply to a bulletin ?

[Bill Vodall]

> I've never understood if it was just not the way people did it or if
> it was simply that nobody is using packet.

Not much use of packet anymore.  I did log into a remote BBS a couple
weeks ago and there was a surprising amount of TCPIP discussion
traffic.

> Part of my issue is that I've found that basically no routing exists
> for the return path when the local nodes can see the bulletin as sent
> amusingly enough.

Often the routing for bulletins is in the path name - for example
"nosbbs at pnw"  would be a general NOSBBS discussion for the Pacific
Northwest.   "nosbbs at ww" would be World Wide - aka everywhere.

> One thing I've just never found yet is where to go to establish proper
> routing once I have a node up...i.e. is there a convention where
> someone maintains a global list of BBS nodes?  How would I know that
> so-and-so has a node in...whatever, say Fiji that I should have
> routing information for?

We just route to our "neighbors" and pick the best neighbor to pass
all the rest (default) traffic to.   They route to their neighbors and
the messages can end up flooding around the world.

73
Bill - WA7NWP