Hi Nick!   
      
   >> > ...Which would start the "trickle effect" now, wouldn't it? LOL   
   >> but not from here necessarily which was my point.. from the 3 star systems,   
   >> yes.   
      
   > Point taken. Basically _all_ mail goes through you, correct?   
      
   As I said, all three stars get all the echomail that goes through.. During   
   that process we take steps to can dupes that appear, so a better statement   
   would be, "all echomail goes through each Star system".   
      
   > How does it go through the Star hubs then? Say if someone in zone 2 wanted to   
   > get a netmail to me, and my uplink links through Ross. but they're linked   
   > through Bob.. does Bob have that as passthru or something to get it to Ross?   
      
   Netmail routing is different and depends on routing charts the star systems   
   maintain for netmail.   
      
   Ross handles all netmail bound for Z3, Bob handles all netmail bound for Z2/Z5   
   as an example.. As Star systems we each set up our individual *routing* for   
   netmail to accomodate these routings for netmail  There are other routings in   
   use, but the above is an example of some of them.   
      
   >I guess I'm just trying to figure out the purpose of the NAB here. I take it i   
      
   The purpose of the North American Backbone is to transfer routed netmail   
   according to netmail routing charts we've established, and to  collect all   
   echomail in Zone 1 and remove duplicate messages before passing the echomail   
   "down" to connections.   
      
   > Fidonet's case, the ZC doesn't pass on to _all_ the RCs in the zone? You only   
   > mail to a few select RCs (the Star hubs) to send to the rest of the RCs?   
      
   The fact that two of the other Star systems are RCs doesn't play into this at   
   all, understand that first of all.  Say Ross or Bob resigned as RC of their   
   respective regions.. They could and probably would remain Star systems.  The   
   jobs of Star and RC are unrelated.   
      
   Likewise, if someday I resign as ZC or die a horrid death buried under my   
   system Lol, I wouldn't have to resign my position as a Star system either..   
   again, totally unrelated jobs.   
      
   Because I am the ZC now however, I do have to maintain a direct connection   
   with each RC so that they can upload their regional segments here each week..   
   _Some_ of the 10 Z1 RCs also just happen to pick up echomail here, but not   
   _all_ of them do.  A while back, I asked each of the RCs if I could route any   
   netmail for their regions to them directly and some of them agreed to that as   
   well.  This is not something they "have" to do by their job description (read   
   policy4).   
      
   Take care,   
   Janis   
      
   --- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Dada-1   
    * Origin: Prism bbs (1:261/38)