ZConnect

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ZConnect is a protocol standard for the data exchange of e-mails and messages in public forums. It has been defined since 1992 as an alternative to existing standards to facilitate the creation of software for these applications.

Development process

The origin of the data format lies in the area of ​​the Z-Netz and represents a development by Zerberus GmbH ( Bielefeld ) from 1992, which was declared a license-free standard and was further developed through a democratic process within the framework of the open ZConnect committee until 1995 .

The ZConnect committee consisted of developers, users and employees from Zerberus GmbH. The moderation as well as the implementation of the vote was taken over by an external person, i.e. not part of the committee. The committee was open to everyone in that the members could decide to add another member at any time.

Five elections were held and ended in version 3.1, which also marked the end of the development of ZConnect.

motivation

The Zerberus mailbox program developed and sold by Zerberus GmbH used proprietary message formats and data exchange protocols up to version 4. These Cerberus 4 de facto standards were also supported by a number of other products and there were a not inconsiderable number of such mailbox systems.

However, the de facto standards were inadequate in several ways. For example, certain pieces of information, such as email addresses and subject lines, were limited in length. Addresses could not contain fully qualified domains . The message exchange was well compressed, but also unstable with a large amount of data .

In the Cerberus community, the existence of international standards for these purposes was well known. Experiences that had already been made when trying to set up gateways between Cerberus networks and UUCP systems, however, led to the generally accepted view that these standards are inherently contradictory, chaotic and complicated. They also took great account of computer system limitations that were long gone by the time, e. B. maximum line lengths of 80 characters or the restriction to seven usable bits per byte .

Against this background, the development of completely new, independent standards appeared easier than implementing the existing protocols. The aim of the developers was to implement the relevant applications better with ZConnect than with the RFC standards.

content

The ZConnect standard includes the standardization of the data format for public and private messages and a definition of a protocol for data exchange between computers via modem or similar asynchronous lines.

ZConnect represented an alternative to various existing standards, which, however, were all already established internationally:

distribution

Even before the completion of version 3.1 of the standard, Cerberus 5 appeared, which tried to implement it completely. Subsequently, a number of other authors implemented the standard in their software, although almost always the implementation of the data exchange protocol, which was again viewed as complicated and not very advantageous, was omitted and only the message formats were implemented. The data transfer continues based on the Cerberus-4 de facto standard. This mix was called Janus , later called Janus + with slight improvements .

After ZConnect had been in use for some time and more and more software became available for ZConnect, it became apparent that ZConnect was not fully defined in the last version 3.1. Differences in the implementations and doubts in the design led to incompatibilities and thus to technical problems.

When the Cerberus-based networks built up more and more gateways to the UUCP and Internet world, it turned out that these gateways now had the problem of translating between the formats, which, due to a lack of precise definitions on both sides, became an almost insoluble problem . The result was news loss and falsification.

Since the standard was not further developed, ZConnect quickly lost importance compared to the standards of the ever faster spreading Internet. Functions that are taken for granted today, such as attaching files to e-mails, are no longer supported by ZConnect.

Advantages and disadvantages of ZConnect compared to Internet standards

advantages

  • Clearer header definition compared to the RFC area
  • Implementation easier than taking into account partially contradicting RFCs
  • no size restrictions for the number of headers and the header and body size
  • Flexible for additional headers and as a meta- tunneling format for mail and news
  • Gateways take on umlaut and format conversions

disadvantage

  • no bijective mapping of the RFC mail headers CC / BCC defined
  • The burden of translating / interpreting unclean RFC messages lies with gateways
  • no extension towards MIME multipart
  • no clear definition for non-European umlaut encoding
  • no internationally recognized standard, gateways are required
  • Active further development by the ZConnect committee ceased approx. 1998.

Programs

Programs that have implemented ZConnect as a data exchange format (alphabetical list):

Point end-user programs

  • Charon ( Windows )
  • CrossPoint ( DOS )
  • rbPoint (DOS)
  • FreeXP (DOS)
  • MicroDot ( Amiga )
  • MyBBS (Amiga)
  • OpenXP ( FreeBSD , Linux , Windows, DOS)
  • TheAnswer 2 (Amiga)
  • The_Dot ( Atari )
  • XP2 (DOS)
  • ZPoint (Zodiac's Point) (Amiga)

Mailbox programs

  • AmBoS (for Amiga)
  • Anubis (for Amiga)
  • ConnectLine (for Amiga)
  • EuroMail (for Amiga)
  • DBOX (for Linux)
  • DinoEx (for POSIX )
  • Fastcall (for Amiga)
  • NCB-Mail (for DOS, Windows)
  • Prometheus (for Amiga, Windows)
  • rBoxPro (DOS)
  • Cerberus (DOS)

Gateways

  • DUUCP (Usenet Mail / ZConnect Gateway)
  • Fidozerb ( FidoNet / Zconnect gateway)
  • Unix Connect (Usenet Mail / ZConnect Gateway)
  • UUCPfZ (Usenet Mail / ZConnect Gateway)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ CHARON - the Point for Windows - German. In: zerberus.com. Retrieved February 13, 2018 .
  2. ↑ CrossPoint / FreeXP Online Homepage. In: freexp.de. Retrieved February 13, 2018 .
  3. ↑ THE_DOT. In: the-dot.de. Retrieved February 13, 2018 .
  4. ↑ ZPoint 3.15. In: aminet.net. Retrieved February 13, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Amiga Future: EuroMail 2.0. In: amigafuture.de. Retrieved February 13, 2018 .
  6. ↑ DBOX BBS Package. In: dbox.handshake.de. Retrieved February 13, 2018 .
  7. ↑ Dinoex - Dinoex mailbox. In: dinoex.de. Retrieved February 13, 2018 .
  8. ↑ Dinoex - Unix Connect. In: dinoex.de. Retrieved February 13, 2018 .

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