On 01 Mar 23  21:02:50, Ogg said the following to All:

O> In some of the network echos, I've seen several messages that report you can
O> "freq" files.  I understand what the file request means.  I've just never be
O> able to find any documentation on how to properly format a netmail to
O> accomplish this task.  Can anyone point me to any documentation or a "how to
O> on freq'ing?

Freq means file-requesting and can mean two different things. A "bot" which 
answers your Netmail and sends you the file, or the functionality of a Fidonet
mailer that supports Bark or Wazoo style requests.

I am not familiar with systems that have Netmail bots to send files because
this could have potential for abuse and several systems may not have file
attachment-routing enabled in their mailers by default. By the time one sends
a Netmail to a bot and wait for a reply, they could "Google it". It appears 
that often there must be a special routing arrangement involved in the Sysops
who run systems with file-bots.

What you will likely find is the latter, and there is no Netmail involved - A
system generates a ".REQ" file containing the filenames or magic-names of
files to request. A magic-name is simply an alias for a file. For example,
magic-name MICRONET could mean to request the latest Micronet nodelist. In 
some cases, special requests to password-protected directories can be made.

The mailer then directly connects / Crash calls the other system via dialup
modem using Emsi, Wazoo or FTS-0001... Or in some cases Internet BinkD. The
.REQ file is sent and the mailer waits usually between 30 seconds to 2 minutes
for the other system to fulfill the request and send back the desired files.

The real fun is watching what happens to that .REQ file when it gets received
on the desired BBS that desired file is on.

The desired BBS must first make sure only certain files may be sent, sometimes
requests can be denied as most mailers have sets of rules and security policy
that are often applied to stop abuse or "leeching" everything from that 
person's BBS. How many times did the caller Freq today, how much KB's or MB's 
worth of files were transferred... how often does he Freq restricted files.

The mailer must also take into account what happens if the request is for a
file that is on a network share, CD or DVD drive; multiple requests spanning
multiple directories may need to be indexed or staged so the Freq request
completes in the short turn-around time allowed. In some cases a BBS Sysop may
choose not to put his whole file collection up for access because his mailer 
simply cannot crawl through a large collection in time... unless the mailer 
uses a complex set of database/index tables to speed things up for him.

You will not find many BBS's today that support FREQ's by BinkD because the
BinkD system on the desired BBS must invoke an external process to read the
generated SRIF (System-requesting information file) and read the received
.REQ to figure out what files to send back in that same session. This is
called an external SRIF or FREQ processor and these programs often are beyond
the scope of most Sysops to make then run... except for the sadomasochists.

The simple act of Freq-ing files involves a LOT of logic and programming in 
the software supporting it. It is almost as complex as handling BBS callers.

D'Bridge can do all of this with just one menu command.

Nick

--- Renegade vY2Ka2
 * Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (618:500/24)