Subj : TITHmailer
To   : deon
From : Deuce
Date : Tue Nov 18 2025 04:26:33

  Re: TITHmailer
  By: deon to Deuce on Tue Nov 18 2025 09:26 am

 > It might be worth considering multiple star topologies? IE: Distributed,
 > otherwise the network falls apart when the 1 hub at the center of the star
 > topology goes AWOL (which happens too often in othernets)...

So it's really up to the individual sysops... when you can connect directly to any system on the network at no cost, you can link your area from any BBS.  This is completely supported today on the existing infrastructure, and the default echomail routing is still somewhat different to the default netmail routing.

The main point is that a tree structure to avoid loops or to minimize costs is obsolete.

 > But agree, a MSGID should be the definitive determination of duplicate
 > content, and it might be a dynamic value being the "sender's ID" and a
 > "timestamp". There might also need to be a "context" element to to avoid the
 > situation that two users (in two different msg areas), post a message at the
 > exact same "timestamp".

Yeah, even the weakest definitions for MSGID require it to carry both the
origin system address and an identifier that is unique on that origin system for a sliding window of at least three years... the "official" standard one in FTS-0009 is pretty terrible (origin followed by a 32-bit hex number that must be magically pulled out of magicland) but even that will work if implemented per the spec (with a separate ticket service that hands out sequential numbers, there's whole other standard proposals for giving out numbers because of this).

Most of the actualy MSGIDs you see on FidoNet are better, so if you just treat the whole thing as a string it'll work... though you still need to build hash trees to be able to deal with them in reasonable timeframes.

 > If a message has a digital signature added to it (as a kludge so its not
 > displayed for example), then the origin line could be completly dynamic and
 > cosmetic.

TITH won't actually put kludges in the message text, so all the administrative "stuff" that TITH adds will be "somewhere else"... though it will get smeared all over the message text per tradition when it goes via a non-TITH interface.  I'm considering initially just having a TITH-only net with everything routed through one system so FidoNet as a whole has a single node to yell at about any bits they don't like.

 > Anyway just spit balling ideas without really thinking them through...

Yeah, that's how it begins...
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