This document explains what it is to be a Kingdoms Coordinator (known as a League Coordinator, or LC) and what tasks a LC does. If you’re not a Coordinator and are not thinking of becoming one, then there’s no need for you to read this to run Kingdoms on your BBS.

A Coordinator is the person who manages a Kingdoms network. Kingdoms makes this task pretty easy by automating all network management functions, but there’s still a lot to do just keeping track of new applications on your network and managing problems that will arise time to time. The Coordinator carries out the following tasks on a Kingdoms network.

That’s only an overview, but you get the picture! If you think you want to get into all this and get a good network going, then read on!

A Kingdoms Network consists of a series of BBS’s running Kingdoms and communicating with each other via standard Netmail conventions. Each BBS in the Network is known as a Realm. Kingdoms directly supports and can address up to 35,000 Realms connected in one distinct network.

In each network there is ONE Coordinator node. All other nodes are equal in this respect. Limited network diagnostic utilities (Worms and Routing Reports) are available to a standard Kingdoms node, but only the Coordinator node can issue the advanced network management commands to directly affect the network as a whole, such as adding, deleting or modifying individual nodes.

Each Realm in the Network must have configured an external mailer to which Kingdoms can define file-attached netmail messages in the .MSG format, such as FrontDoor or Blinkey supports. A switch is available also in the outbound manager to support the Blinkey/Squish mailer file attach message format. Obviously, a new Realm coming into the game must have a link to another Realm for mail transfer and a valid network address through which their respective mailers can communicate. Unlike many other InterBBS games, it is quite permissable for each node in a Kingdoms network to be on a different network. Eg, one Realm can use a Fidonet address like 3:712/523 and the next an AdultLink address, 69:1171/200. As long as the mailers communicate, it doesn’t matter to Kingdoms what network it’s creating outbound and processing inbound files for. It will manage each seamlessley.

Note that the Coordinator node need not be central in terms of a network ‘picture’ in any way. As far as connections are concerned, it matters only that the Coordinator, through some path, is connected to all other nodes. The Coordinator Realm may be a central mail hub, or a node way down a mail feed line.

To get the most out of this document and run your network at it’s best, you’ll need to understand the following terms :

Each BBS in your network must have an Index file, called KIDX.DAT. It must reside in the ‘Game Directory’, as defined in the Kingdoms Manager for each BBS. If an Index is not found or it is empty, Kingdoms will refuse to enter the InterBBS options for players. The Index is effectively the ‘nodelist’ for your network and is created and updated by you, the Kingdoms coordinator. The Index has one record for each BBS and holds (or is updated with) the following information.

I will discuss fully what these things mean later, but for now just be aware that the Index exists and that it is used to define to each system what BBS’s are in the network and who routes data to whom.

Routing Rules are rules specified by each Sysop for their BBS. They tell Kingdoms where to send mail to for each node.

When each Sysop in the network defines their node to the Index during setup, a Default Outbound is assigned based on the network connections you have defined which are held in each Index on each Realm. Relative to each node, Kingdoms will set the Default Outbound as the outbound which is the shortest (or only) available uplink to you, the Coordinator node. The Self Correction facilities in Kingdoms 2.15 and later will poll the Default Outbound at intervals specified by each Sysop in the ‘Other’ section of the Manager. This ensures the integrity of the network is maintained by propogating changes that might have been missed through the normal update channels when you actually make changes to the network.

Following are the basics of what a Coordinator needs to do to get a network up and running and to maintain it. The remainder of the document goes into detail about what each of these things mean if you want further information. Everything done here is achieved using the general and Coordinator functions in the Kingdoms Manager :

You may want to wing it from here, but I suggest reading the rest if you REALLY want to understand what you’re doing as a Kingdoms Coordinator.

In the Manager, you will have seen a place you can enter a ‘Network ID’. If you are playing in an existing network, this is normally provided for you. As a Coordinator however, you must select your own for your network and make sure everyone in your network knows what it is and has entered it correctly. If they have it wrong, Kingdoms on their system will not process data from your network.

The Network ID is simply a means of tagging network mail as belonging to your game (your network) rather than another. That way, data doesn’t get processed by nodes outside your network and/or using another Kingdoms network as well as yours.

The NetID is used primarily in two places - KNetIn and KNetOut. The way these are used will be explained shortly, but first it is advisable to understand how file names are created by Kingdoms -

The format of a Kingdoms outbound file name is "KNxxxyyy.zza" where :

Thus, the file ‘KN003006.FAC’ is a Kingdoms Network file going from BBS 3 and destined for BBS 6, ie, the 3^rd and 6^th BBS’s listed in the Index file. The file contains data for the Kingdoms network with ID ‘FA’ and has a unique identifier of ‘C’. The next outbound from BBS 3 would be named ‘KN003006.FAD’, & so on.

The 003 and 006 are really meaningless to Kingdoms itself as it does not care who is sending data to whom as far as filenames go. This naming convention has been chosen for Kingdoms Sysops to be able to see at a glance what data is going where without having to edit files and search out origin addresses, destination addresses, etc etc.

The part of the file name we want to talk about here however is the Network ID. As discussed, it is part of the filename of outbounds created by any Kingdoms system. When you choose the ID for your network, you must NOT choose one that has special characters in it, or other characters that are not valid characters in a DOS file name. To be completely safe, I recommend you stay with alphabetic characters and numbers. Case is not sensitive thus ‘Aa’, ‘aa’ and ‘aA’ are, to Kingdoms, the same Network ID.

In full, valid characters in a Network ID’s are the letters A through Z and numbers 0 through 9 inclusive and the characters underscore, _, carat, ^, dollar, $, tilde, ~, exclamation, !, number, #, percent, %, ampersand, &, hyphen, -, braces, {}, parenthesis, (), at, @, apostrophe, ‘, and grave accent, `. No other special characters are acceptable and your Network ID ***MUST NOT*** contain spaces, commas, backslashes, periods or question marks.

To summarise all that, the network ID is used to generate outbound file names. It must therefore be made up of characters which are valid in a DOS filename. It must also be exactly two characters in length.

As discussed, the network ID should be unique. This is to stop mail from your network getting muddled with mail that should be for another network. How you make it unique is a harder question when you can’t know what everyone else is using, but I suggest you check with those nodes that are in and/or joining your network. As long as they aren’t using the one you want already for another network, you’re probably OK. A complete list of all the NetId’s I hear about/know of is maintained on the Kingdoms support page on the Net - http://www1.tpgi.com.au/users/kingdoms.

A file is also available on my BBS for FREQ under the magic name ‘KNETID’ which lists all the currently used Network ID’s that I’ve been told about. I urge you to FREQ a copy of this or check out the Web site and choose a Network ID not already in use elsewhere in the world. That done, then mail me (crash, net, internet, whatever) the one you’ve chosen and I’ll add it to KNETID so others can make sure they don’t use yours!

To make your Index, choose the first option, ‘Generate Index’ by pressing Enter when it is highlighted. It’s assumed here that you do NOT have an index (KIDX.DAT) file in your Kingdoms directory. If you do, you must remove it before trying to create a brand new index. If one does exist, the Generate Index option behaves differently and will offer you the option of generating a Distribution index from the existing one the Manager found. Generating a distribution index is discussed shortly however - for now, we’ll assume there is not one there.

After choosing Generate Index, a window will pop up asking you for your node information. You’re required to enter your network address, BBS name and Sysop name. This data is needed and used to create the first entry in your new index file. Your entry will also be tagged as the Coordinator node. A couple of points to note here :

That’s all there is to creating your Index File. Press Esc when you’ve entered all the information correctly and confirm the data is correct. Your new index file (KIDX.DAT) will be created with one Realm in it, your own, tagged as the Coordinator Realm.

Once created you will, of course, want to add other nodes to it. Adding nodes is a two step process.

When you first add a new node, it does not actually get activated or distributed immediately. Rather, it is placed on your index only (not distributed across the network) as a PENDING Node. The reason for this is to facilitate the creation of Distribution Index files. I shall take a moment out to explain this.

When a new Realm (BBS) comes onto your network, that Realm will need an index file in order to set themselves up. Of course, that index file must contain their BBS, or they’re not going to get far. Who wants a nodelist that doesn’t list their own node? You could just add the new node (without having the ‘Pending’ concept) and send them a copy of the Index from your own system, but that will cause problems for two reasons :

Instead of causing these problems, the PENDING node is created. In PEND status, a Realm does not appear in your game Realm listings, nor is the new node distributed to other Realms already active in your network. In short, it doesn’t exist yet to players in your game or to other Realms at all, but it IS on YOUR, the Coordinator’s, Index file. What you can do at this point is use the ‘Generate Index’ option again, as you did when you first created the Index for your own Coordinator node. Because an Index already exists this time, Kingdoms will assume that you do not want to generate a completely new index. Instead, it will create for you a Distribution Index file, which is a copy of your existing Index including PENDING nodes, with all routing fields initialised to zero or blanks, as appropriate. This you can send to your new nodes and they will have a fully initialised, up-to-date Index, which DOES have their node listed. They can set themselves up and when they’re ready you can Enable the Pending node, which will make that Realm active (listed and usable by players in the game) on your Realm in addition to distributing an Index update to all other Realms, making the new Realm active across the net also without further action required on your behalf.

The Distribution Index file is created as KIDX.id, where nn is the Network ID as defined in the <O>ther section of the Manager. It is not, of course, called KIDX.DAT, as that would overwrite your existing Index file!

So, to summarise the process of generating and Index and adding nodes to your network:

When you choose Add Node, you’ll need to provide the following information for each node you want to add :

Items 1 thru 3 should be obvious, but item 4 requires some explanation. The ‘Connect To’ site is simply the BBS who the new BBS is going to pick up mail from. As Coordinator you should have this information already as anyone joining your network will need to have already decided a point they’ll pick up Kingdoms mail from and informed you where their pickup is during their application.

As discussed, this info will be retained as a Pending node on your Index. Other than choosing (and confirming) the Enable Node option from your coordinator menu, there is NOTHING more you need to do to make the new node active across your entire League. Once you Enable the node, the following will take place, all internally & automatically through your Kingdoms network.

A few safety nets and warning systems exist here for you :

The fields for each Realm include :