Conference Mail System

The Conference Mail System (CMS), introduced in 1986 by Bob Hartman as an evolution of earlier FastEcho utilities, was a high-performance Echomail processor designed to scale FidoNet’s rapidly growing distributed discussion network. Building on the original Echomail concept created in 1985 by Jeff Rush, CMS automated and optimized the scanning, packing, routing, duplicate detection, and tossing of shared message conferences across FidoNet-compatible systems. As Echomail expanded from small regional sysop groups to hundreds of interconnected nodes carrying dozens of conferences, the limitations of earlier tools became apparent; CMS addressed these scaling challenges with improved speed, reliability, and management features. By making large-scale conference distribution practical and efficient, Conference Mail played a significant role in FidoNet’s late-1980s growth, helping transform Echomail from a clever regional experiment into a robust, global store-and-forward discussion network comparable in structure to Usenet.