Sporga's Place is one of tens of thousands of bulletin board systems (BBSes) around the world. A BBS is simply a computer system, usually setup in a persons home, that is made available to any to call using a normal phone line and modem to communicate, play games, transfer files, and many other things. A BBS is not usually directly connected to the InterNet, though many are.
Instead, most BBSes are connect to each other in various amateur or hobbyist networks, the largest and oldest of which is FidoNet, currently containing over 20,000 nodes (or systems) world wide! FidoNet is broken into smaller, community size nets around the world, and Sporga is a part of the Twin Cities Metronet (Net282) located in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota. My address on FidoNet is 1:282/1050.