Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!ncis.tis.llnl.gov!en-c06.x400.prime.COM!Robert.Ullmann
From: Robert.Ullmann@en-c06.x400.prime.COM
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso.x400.gateway
Subject: an apology to Steve, and more discussion ...
Message-ID: <897JC203801036*Robert.Ullmann@EN-C06.X400.Prime.COM>
Date: 19 Jul 89 16:22:11 GMT
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Steve,

I would like to apologise for some of my comments. I hope
we can return the discussion to technical issues. And
(unfortunately) political ones.

I did in fact file your note appropriately; it is in my
X.400-gate/recvd-from/private/Kille folder. I seem to
have given some people the impression that I had
discarded it ...

--------

Yes, I am "energetic"! I am very exited by the prospect
that we can really have a world-wide mail system, with
fairly simple domain addressing. The technology has been
available (in various forms) for over a decade; what has
been lacking is a perception (by management) that it is needed.

My experience in implementing mail in several organizations
and sub-organizations, including one large multi-national
corporation, is that mail is viewed as useless until after
it is operational. Then the same people can't live without it.

The idea that there is real world-wide recognition that
*connected* electronic mail is needed by modern organizations has
been a long time coming; and I am quite excited that it
is finally arriving.

--------

Recent message(s) to this list have lamented that the Internet
has not defined how it will set up its ADMD(s) and/or PRMD(s).

I believe the answer is that the Internet community is not
interested in a new structuring: we already have a domain
system that works. All we really need is a single-point
connection in the hierarchy.

This is why I am suggesting the /C=XA/ method; it is the simplest
possible connection. (Even simpler would be /C=COM/, etc, with
a *totally* uniform translation; this, however only works with
some X.400 s/w. I did prototype it just for fun ... :-)

To (hopefully accurately) quote Albert Einstein:

"A theory should be as simple as possible, and no simpler."

In return, the Internet will hide all of its internal structure
(other than in the ISO-3166 domains), allowing the X.400 administrations
to use the simple rule /C=XA/ goes to (nearest) internet gate
and it will be handled. Or to the nearest X.400 MTA within
the internet set up as /C=XA/... which can obviously find
a gate. (such as EN-C06.Prime.COM, which is also configured to
be /C=XA/A=COM/P=Prime/O=X400/OU=EN-C06/)

The internet will then also route for /C=XA/A=BITNET/ and /C=XA/A=uucp/
(which gives both of those nets a standard place in the domains
until all of their systems have "real" domain names. Whatever
"real" means. <grin>). This also provides a place for any other
foreign net, if it is properly gated to the internet as a
top-level domain, whether in DNS (e.g. INT) or not as long
as it is commonly routed for (e.g. UUCP).

Of course "COM" isn't an "ADMD", but that doesn't matter: the
internal structure of XA is not visible from outside. (Isn't
that the whole point of domains?)

All of which does not preclude local re-write rules. To use
an example, which was kindly provided by Piet:

The internet host cwi.nl is, in X.400, within /P=surf/A=400net.

When this is translated with the Dutch gateway rule, either in nl, or
anywhere else that has set up the rule:

/C=nl/A=400net/P=surf/O=cwi/           cwi.nl

when translated elsewhere, this results in:

cwi.surf.400net.nl

which will follow the *.nl or *.400net.nl MX route, and can
then be translated (even if only by looping it through the
Dutch gate!)

The reverse case will result in /C=nl/A=cwi/, which is handled
by the X.400 MTA by simply throwing any unknown C/ADMD pair
at a gate, and letting the other side look it up in DNS.
(which, at least until X.400 is self-connected as well as
the internet, is what the MTAs will be doing anyway.)

This will be particularily easy for MTAs such as the one
Christian Huitema referred to which access both systems with
equal ease.

This means that knowledge of others' translation rules becomes
a convenience, not a necessity. Which makes the administration
of the Pan-European Master Table (:-) much easier; it can be
updated and distributed as desired by the participants.

Proposed entries for the Internet:

$ADMD=<name>.$C=XA#<name>#
and
<name>#$ADMD=<name>.$C=XA

for <name> in { COM, EDU, NET, MIL, GOV, INT, IRL, ORG, UUCP, BITNET, ARPA }

(my gate has this built-in, for any "top-level" name > 2 letters, but
that is just a refinement that anticipates any domains that might
be added later)

And then maybe we can talk about technical details, like getting
more local-parts and personal names to reversibly map?

Robert