Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!cmcl2!phri!marob!cowan
From: cowan@marob.masa.com (John Cowan)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: INTERNET vs Internet
Keywords: INTERNET MCI
Message-ID: <2700B3F9.6A98@marob.masa.com>
Date: 26 Sep 90 13:58:17 GMT
References: <940@eplunix.UUCP> <13830@netcom.UUCP>
Organization: ESCC, New York City
Lines: 46

In article <13830@netcom.UUCP> ergo@netcom.uucp writes:
>In <940@eplunix.UUCP> ijs@eplunix.UUCP (Ishmael) writes:
>>In today's mail I received a flyer from Gerber Electronics describing
>>all the various ways to contact them, and in addition to the usual
>>phone, FAX, cable, MCI, EZlink, GEISCO addresses, they had the following
>>paragraph:
>
>>	Our MCI Mail number is xxx-xxxx.  This is particularly useful
>>	for customers connected to INTERNET.  They can send messages
>>	to us via MCI MAIL by addressing them:
>>	  TO:	Gerber Electronics/MCI IC: 403-8582
>>	  EMS:  INTERNET/MCI IC: 403-8582
>>	and of course we can reply to them via MCI MAIL if they
>>	furnish their INTERNET address.	
>Hey, chill out!  Obviously whoever wrote this never used any mailer
>except MCI's, and thought all mailers have the same user interface.
>Apparently an MCI user has to specify the above "EMS" (whatever that

EMS = Electronic Messaging System.  Essentially it gives MCI Mail an
indication of the interpretation domain of the address.  For example
"INTERNET" indicates that the recipient is on the Internet, "TELEX"
indicates that the recipient is a Telex number, etc.

If no EMS is mentioned, of course MCI Mail assumes MCI Mail as the
interpretation domain.

>According to the Nutshell handbook, the internet form of an MCI
>address is xxxx@mcimail.com, where xxxx is the "accountname", "mci id"
>or "full user name".  Never having used MCI, I've no idea what those
>terms correspond to in Gerber's example, but I'd guess you could write
>them at 403-8582@mcimail.com.

4038582 is the "MCI Id" and uniquely specifies a recipient.

The "full user name" is a name like "John.Jones", which may or may not be
unique.  If it isn't unique, postmaster@mcimail.com will send back a polite
message informing you of all the John Joneses on line and giving you the
MCI ids of them all, plus (hopefully) some other identifying information
to help you guess which one you wanted.

The "accountname" is the name used by the MCI Mail user to log in.  It is
not necessarily unique and is typically shorter than the full user name,
and hard to guess.  Better to avoid it.
-- 
cowan@marob.masa.com			(aka ...!hombre!marob!cowan)
			e'osai ko sarji la lojban