FidoNet: The Internet Before the Internet

Every night at 2am, my BBS called other BBSs. Messages and files propagated across phone lines, city to city, country to country. This was the internet before the internet - and in some ways, it was better.

FidoNet started in 1984 when Tom Jennings wrote code to let his BBS exchange messages with another BBS. By the late 1980s, it had grown into a global network of thousands of nodes, spanning continents, all running on donated hardware over regular phone lines. I watched it grow from a curiosity to a genuine global network - and participated in that growth as a node operator.

I ran a FidoNet node. I was part of this network. And what we built - with primitive technology and zero funding - laid the groundwork for everything that came after. This was part of a broader BBS culture that modern tech has largely forgotten.

How FidoNet Worked

The architecture was simple and elegant:

I've watched this pattern destroy teams. I'm trying to save you the same pain.

Nodes. Each BBS was a node with a unique address. Mine was something like 1:343/22 - Zone 1 (North America), Net 343 (Seattle area), Node 22. The addressing scheme was hierarchical and human-readable.

The Zone Mail Hour. Every night, during a designated window (usually 2-4am local time), BBSs would call each other and exchange messages. Long-distance calls were cheaper at night. Everyone agreed to be available during this window.

Store and forward. Messages didn't go directly from sender to recipient. They propagated through the network, hopping from node to node, until they reached their destination. A message might take days to cross the country, but it would get there.

Echomail. Public discussions worked like newsgroups or modern forums. You'd subscribe to "echoes" - topics like programming, politics, science fiction. Messages posted anywhere would eventually reach every subscribed node.

Netmail. Private messages worked like email. You'd address a message to a specific user at a specific node, and it would route through the network to reach them.

The Technology

FidoNet ran on what we'd now consider impossibly primitive hardware.

My BBS ran on an 8MHz 8088 with 640KB of RAM. The modem was 2400 baud - about 240 characters per second. The hard drive was 40MB, which felt enormous at the time. I learned more about networking protocols from running that node than from any textbook.

The software handled everything: scheduling calls, managing the modem, compressing messages for transfer, routing packets to their destinations. All of it written in assembly and C, squeezed into systems with no memory to spare. According to historical documentation, by the mid-1990s there were almost 40,000 FidoNet systems in operation worldwide - a truly global network built on volunteer effort.

We used compression algorithms that predated modern standards. ARC, then ZIP. Every byte mattered when you were transferring over phone lines at 240 characters per second.

The protocols handled error correction, retransmission, and handshaking. XMODEM, YMODEM, ZMODEM - each an improvement over the last, each designed for unreliable phone lines and slow modems.

What We Had

As IEEE Spectrum documented, FidoNet grew into a massive 20,000-node network reaching users in South Africa and New Zealand. By the late 1980s, FidoNet had essentially everything the modern internet has:

Email. Netmail was email. You could send a message to anyone on the network, anywhere in the world. It might take a few days to arrive, but it worked.

Forums. Echomail was Reddit, Hacker News, and Twitter combined. Thousands of discussion topics, global participation, threaded conversations.

File distribution. Software, documents, games - anything digital could be packaged and distributed through the network. It was package management before package managers.

News. Information about world events propagated through echoes dedicated to news and current events. Slower than CNN, but more participatory.

Community. Relationships formed. Feuds developed. Inside jokes spread. People fell in love. All the social dynamics of modern online communities existed in FidoNet. And for those of us who also ran door games, FidoNet was how we connected those gaming communities across boards.

What Made It Work

FidoNet succeeded for reasons that are worth remembering:

Voluntary cooperation. Nobody owned FidoNet. Node operators volunteered their hardware, their phone lines, their electricity. They did it because they wanted to be part of something.

Clear governance. FidoNet had policies - rules about what you could and couldn't do, how disputes were resolved, how new nodes joined. The policies were enforced by humans who knew each other, not algorithms.

Local accountability. Your local net coordinator was usually someone in your city. You might meet them at a computer club. They weren't an anonymous corporate entity - they were a person with a reputation to maintain.

Technical meritocracy. If you could write better software, you earned respect. If you could keep your node running reliably, you earned trust. Competence mattered.

Shared values. FidoNet participants generally believed in free information exchange, technical excellence, and community building. These weren't corporate values - they were genuine shared beliefs.

The Zone Mail Hour

There was something almost magical about the Zone Mail Hour.

Every night, my BBS would wake up at 2am. The modem would dial out - the familiar screech of the handshake. Data would flow. Messages I'd posted would propagate outward. Messages addressed to me would arrive.

In the morning, there would be new messages. Replies to posts I'd made days ago, from people I'd never meet, in cities I'd never visit. The network had done its work while I slept.

It felt like magic. Slow magic, but magic nonetheless.

Taiwan's PTT

Here's something that surprises people: BBS culture never died everywhere.

In Taiwan, PTT (Professional Technology Temple) still has over 1.5 million active users. It runs on the same basic architecture as those old BBSs - text-based interface, message boards, direct connections.

PTT is huge in Taiwanese culture. Politicians use it. News breaks there. It's where young Taiwanese discuss everything from politics to relationships to gaming.

The technology is "obsolete." The community is thriving. Maybe the technology isn't what matters.

What We Lost

When the web took over, we gained a lot. Easy access. Rich media. Universal participation. But we also lost things:

Local community. Your BBS was usually local. The people you talked to lived nearby. You might meet them in person. Modern platforms are global, which sounds good until you realize you have no community at all - just an audience. This is why I've argued that SysOps understood content moderation better than modern tech companies.

Accountability. SysOps (system operators) had names and reputations. They made decisions and stood by them. Modern platforms have "Trust and Safety teams" that hide behind anonymity and algorithms.

Scarcity that created value. When connections were expensive and bandwidth was limited, people thought before they posted. Modern abundance has created a firehose of low-quality content.

Technical literacy. Running a BBS required understanding how computers worked. Using modern platforms requires nothing. We've democratized access by dumbing down the interface.

Ownership. I owned my BBS. The data was on my hard drive. I set the rules. Modern users own nothing - not their data, not their audience, not their history. It can all be taken away by a platform decision.

Decentralization Scorecard

Compare any "decentralized" project against what actually worked in FidoNet:

Lessons for Today

FidoNet was decentralized, community-run, and built on open protocols - all things that blockchain advocates claim to want. But FidoNet actually worked. It ran for over a decade. It served millions of users. It created genuine community. I've seen modern "decentralized" systems fail where FidoNet succeeded, because they forgot what actually made it work.

What was different?

Human governance. FidoNet had coordinators and policies, not algorithms and smart contracts. When conflicts arose, humans resolved them.

Shared purpose. FidoNet participants wanted to communicate and build community. Modern decentralized systems often have participants who want to get rich. Different motivations create different outcomes.

Technical competence. Running a FidoNet node required real skills. This filtered for participants who understood and respected the technology. Modern platforms require nothing, so they get everyone, including people who shouldn't be there.

Real costs. Running a node cost money - phone bills, hardware, electricity. This created skin in the game. Modern platforms are "free," which means users are the product, not the customer.

Maybe the lesson is that the technology matters less than the people and the incentives. FidoNet's technology was primitive, but its social architecture was sound. Modern platforms have incredible technology and terrible social architecture.

Still Out There

FidoNet still exists. Nodes still exchange messages. The traffic is a fraction of what it was, but the network persists.

I don't run a node anymore. But I remember what it felt like to be part of something that nobody owned, that we all built together, that worked because we made it work.

The internet has given us more than FidoNet ever could. But I'm not sure it's given us anything as pure.

"FidoNet proved that you don't need venture capital, cutting-edge technology, or corporate backing to build a global communication network."