What is Zone Mail Hour?
=======================
   Zone Mail Hour (ZMH) is a common hour in a zone where all boards
are available for sending and receiving NetMail, and they refuse to
accept human callers or file requests or echo mail transfers during
that time. Because Zone 1 is North America, there are probably eight
different zones, from the eastern tip of Canada clear to Alaska and
Hawaii.
   Obviously, the local mail hour is different for each time zone. And
also, it changes every time we go on or off Daylight Savings Time,
thus messing up our carefully scheduled events.
   ZMH is 02:00-03:00 Pacific Daylight Time, or 01:00-02:00 Pacific
Standard Time. As we head East, it's later in the day. Mountain
Standard would be 02:00-03:00. Eastern would 04:00-05:00. That way all
boards in the zone are "open" at once for NetMail, the original
intention.
   In some sense ZMH is an anachronistic remnant of a time when
continuous mailers were not yet invented. At that time all Mail events
had to be precisely coordinated in time slots where you had to kick
callers off your board and receive mail during your slot from your
hub. A minute's deviation and you would run over into someone else's
time, creating havoc, not to mention angry Sysops. FidoNet was a
precisely engineered clock until CM Mailers made the whole idea
obsolete. Everyone had clock programs that would automatically call
the Naval Observatory and set the system clock to the hundredth of a
second.
   Nevertheless, one of the requirements of FidoNet membership is that
your board be available for NetMail during ZMH, whether it is a full
or a part-time board. In other words, if you're part-time, one of your
"UP" times will be ZMH. You donate one hour to NetMail exclusively.
This means you don't send or receive EchoMail during this time. You
don't send or receive files during this time. And your users can't use
your board at this time. Zone Mail Hour is for NetMail only. Can you
get away with not being up during ZMH? Oh, probably.
   
What's a DOWN Board?
====================
   If you are NOT up during ZMH, then you can be taken off the
Nodelist, or at least marked DOWN until you again comply with the
requirement. It's not that your NC will check your board every day
during ZMH. That won't happen. But "flaky" boards are not appreciated
in FidoNet. That ensures the Nodelist is fairly accurate. In my
experience keeping the BBS list for Kitsap, there is usually a 20%
change per month on boards. I think Fido boards are more stable than
others, but they still go up and down all the time.
   DOWN in the Nodelist is supposed to be a temporary affliction not
to last for more than two weeks. If you're still DOWN after two weeks
of Nodediff entries, you get taken off the Nodelist altogether. In
practice, this might not happen so quickly, but if it does, you really
have no cause to complain. Some NC's are more strict about this than
others.
   FidoNet Sysops really do have to make an attempt to be up, if for
nothing else then to accept mail packets. Your HUB has to store copies
of your mail until those packets can be sent to you. I don't know what
the average board takes in the way of mail. Everyone seems to think
they haul in "only a few" echoes. But if your feed is a megabyte a
day, that's not at all unusual.
   Your HUB stores that on a daily basis, as well as everyone else he
feeds. If the next board gets the same batch of messages you do, he
stores duplicate copies, taking up twice as much space. If all 20
nodes get a megabyte a day, that means 20 MB of storage needs to be
available. He CANNOT store your mail on his hard disk indefinitely. It
MUST get off his disk so he has more room for the next round of mail
coming from the Regional Hub. If you are DOWN, you're causing your Hub
a problem. It probably won't last for long because he'll take you "off
distribution" so your mail won't build up. Then you miss all your
feeds.
   So, the bottom line is that if you are going to be gone away from
your BBS for an extended period of time, let your Hub know in advance.
If your board DOES crash, he'll know why the mail can't get through.
At least he'll be more tolerant of the situation because he knows
you're not around to fix it.
   
