What on earth was fidonet ? There is a very good explaination here http://www.fidonet.us/dummyguide.html

The short answer is that it was a distributed mail network that spanned the globe. It is the forerunner to the common email now and every person had their own mailbox they accessed via dialup.

Confused: yes it was a bit confusing at fist. Essentially your mailbox was a point, or a single number that was part of a node which was part of a hub and then a region.

I had two, 2:254.40.1 & 2:254/40.2 , this becuase I ran two hubs (40) and each needed their own point (1 & 2)