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MSN Classic

The BBS can be The Microsoft Network as it was from 1995 to 1998, for the MSN client that came with Windows 95 ("MSN Classic"). A caller signs in with their BBS name and password, MSN Central is the BBS, the Categories folder holds the BBS's message areas (a folder for each area group), and each area opens as an MSN bulletin board: the messages listed with their replies under them, a message opened in the reader, new posts and replies from the Compose window, and a member's own messages deleted. MSN Today lists the boards with the newest messages. The Inbox (Microsoft Exchange, with the MSN service) is the caller's BBS mail, and the Chat folder holds the BBS's chat rooms, where MSN callers talk with everyone else in them. The Files folder holds the file areas, whose files download, and Find searches all of it. This is early work, not yet tried with a real client.

Over TCP

[marvel]
address = :569
Setting Default What it sets
address :569 where to listen
max_clients 64 clients at once
max_per_ip 4 from one address

The client can't be told a port: it is always 569. It connects to the name in its Dial-Up Networking settings for "The Microsoft Network" (by default gateway.moswest.msn.net): point that name at the BBS in the hosts file of the client's machine (C:\Windows\hosts).

By modem

A modem caller's client sends a carriage return and waits for COM, then speaks MSN's own packets. A listener with frontend = marvel answers that way (telnet, in binary, or raw), so a modem bridge such as D-Modem can hand the call over as it does for the text BBS:

[listen msn]
type = raw
address = 127.0.0.1:2325
frontend = marvel

Point the client's phone number at the line that reaches that listener.

What callers get

  • Signing in: the Sign In dialog's member ID and password are a BBS account's. A wrong password, an unknown name, a locked account and a throttled address each get the client's own message, and failed sign-ins count against the address as everywhere else. A signed-in client is a node and shows in Who's On as MSN. The Password dialog changes the BBS password. The billing pages show the account's name and location and keep nothing.
  • The 1996 client (Windows 95 OSR2, MSN 1.3) signs in with NTLM: it never sends the password, only an answer to a challenge worked out from the password's LAN Manager hash. The BBS keeps that hash and the NT hash for each account, made whenever the password is typed in the clear (signing in any other way, or setting a password), and bound to the password, so a password changed somewhere they aren't made leaves them unused until it is typed again. An account whose hashes aren't kept yet gets "Password not valid" from this client: sign in once by telnet, the web or the 1995 client first. The hashes are kept only while MSN Classic is served (a [marvel] section or a frontend = marvel listener), and they are password equivalents, the LM hash a weak one, so the database needs guarding as a password file does. After signing in, the Password dialog and the billing pages travel sealed (RC4) under the sign-in's key, as the client expects.
  • The directory: only the areas the caller may read are listed. Go words are the areas' and groups' names (in any case), and today.
  • Bulletin boards: up to the newest few hundred messages of an area (as many as fit in one reply). Bodies are plain text. A board the caller may not post in is read-only in the client. A post may come as plain or rich text (compressed or not); it is kept as plain text, with its reply threading. Attachments are refused.
  • E-mail: Exchange's Inbox gets the caller's BBS mail, and a message read there is marked read. Mail sent from Exchange goes out as BBS mail: to a member by name, or to an internet address where the BBS sends e-mail. Rich text is kept as plain text, and an attachment is left out with a line saying so. If some recipients can't be sent to, the rest still get it and the sender gets a note from Postmaster naming the ones that didn't. Deleting a message moves it to the BBS's trash.
  • The address book: the BBS's members (not locked accounts or QWK nodes), for Exchange's member list, for names typed into To:, and for the Member Properties sheet (name, location and the About text). With them come the caller's own saved addresses, so a saved name typed into To: finds its address on any PC. The saved addresses are the same ones as CompuServe's Address Book, and an internet address the caller mails from Exchange is added to them (unless its name or address is there already). Exchange's own Personal Address Book stays on the caller's PC: the client never tells the server what it adds there.

  • Chat: the Chat folder (go word chat, in MSN Central and in Categories) lists the main room, the permanent rooms and those in use, with each one's topic and how many are in it. Opening one joins it in the chat window, with everyone already there listed. MSN callers share rooms with telnet, IRC and every other caller, and with linked rooms on other networks. /me at the start of a line is an action. Sysop rooms aren't listed, and rooms can't be made from the client.

  • Files: the Files folder (go word files, in MSN Central and in Categories) has a folder for each file area the caller may download from. Each file is a Download-and-Run file, as MSN's own downloads were: opening it has the client's File Transfer Manager fetch it, with its progress window, and then the client opens it as Explorer would (a program runs; a .zip opens in whatever the PC opens those with). The file lands in the PC's temporary folder, so a caller who wants to keep it saves it from there. Each download counts against the caller's daily limit and ratio, as it does everywhere else.

  • Find: Find > The Microsoft Network searches the directory's names and descriptions: folders, boards, chat rooms, file libraries and files (not the messages in a board). The words and wildcards work as the dialog's help says: a word matches whole words, * and ? stand in for letters, and a quoted phrase matches its words in order. The "of type" list narrows it (bulletin boards, chat rooms, "Kiosks and other files" for the files, newsgroups for the areas that carry one). Nothing here has a place, so a search with Place filled in finds nothing. At most 200 results come back.

Not served yet: the sign-up wizard and MSN Today's Media Viewer title.

Where the protocol comes from

The protocol, codenamed Marvel, was reverse-engineered by the marvel-msn project, whose notes and wire captures this server is written from. None of that project's code is used.