Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!jarthur!ucivax!gateway From: Stef@ICS.UCI.EDU (Einar Stefferud) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso.x400 Subject: Re: admd policies Message-ID: <1334.663153053@nma> Date: 6 Jan 91 18:24:08 GMT Reply-To: Stef@ICS.UCI.EDU Lines: 80 Approved: usenet@ICS.UCI.EDU In-reply-to: Paul-Andre Pays message of 03 Jan 91 11:58:53 +0100. <9101031058.AA19994@mars.emse.fr> This is a reply to the whole string of ADMD policy messages --- It is critical to understand and use the correct mind set when discussing this topic. FIRST, CCITT only addressed policy and operational X.400 issues relating to ADMD-to-ADMD and ADMD-to-PRMD transfers! CCITT did not speak to any other topic, such as PRMD-to-PRMD transfers. By this I mean that they did not speak! Their lips were seen to not move. In the parlance of the standards industry, this means that such things were left to be resolved as local matters (at national or lower levels) or with bilateral agreements. So, it is permitted (and clearly not prohibited) to transfer messages with P1 or P3 (and now with P7) across PRMD boundaries, even when the involved MTAs are in different countries, unless one (or the other) of the involved countries has a legal prohibition against such transfers. Note that it is not the CCITT that recommends prohibition of such transfers! It is the involved country making a "local" national decision, independent of any CCITT recommendation. Any country has the right to implement any such restriction if it wishes, based on its sovereign rights, within the confines its signed treaties. SECOND, It is entirely possible to set up a Service Management Domain (the INTERNET is one already, whether anyone has noticed or not) that provides transfer services between consenting MTAs in consenting Management Domains (of the PRMD or ADMD persuasion) without requiring that the Service Management Domain Name be present in any of the the ORAddresses in the messages that are transferred. Such a Service Management Domain might well use a combination of TCP/IP, X.25 or other network protocols, as long as they do not violate the P1, P3, or P7 standards (and applicable implementation agreements, et al). A good example of such a Service Management Domain would be SHAPE (the NATO military command operation) which will have to find ways to transfer mail among the many units of different countries that are under its command. NATO and SHAPE have been grouping for ways to do this, and have considered becoming a ADMD, a PRMD, and a COUNTRY, but have not (as far as I can tell) discovered that they only need to set up routing tables in their MTAs, and get on with transferring the mail! Third, routing is not ever required (even by the CCITT 1984 X.400 recommendation text) to be through ADMDs between PRMDs! Period! FULL STOP! FOURTH, The SEMANTIC of what is an ADMD is a (local) national matter. It is not to be decided by this forum, or by any international technical of standards body. It must be decided by each country, within the contexts and limits of the treaties that underlay the ITU (International Telecommunications Union), which govern the behavior of any telecommunications service that provides public communications across international boundaries. (I do not wish to expound on the ITU rules here because I am not an adequate expert in this realm.) Suffice to say that these rules are interpreted differently in each country, so that the national decision on the SEMANTICS of ADMD and PRMD must be different in each country. This should help to explain why we have so many different (but possibly all correct) interpretations of the X.400 standards when it comes to ADMD policy. What is right and obvious for Country A is not likely to be obvious or right for country B. So, I suggest that we not argue about what is absolutely right or wrong for all co8untries, and discuss what we are each doing in the way of making national decision, in the spirit of sharing our experiences and workign toward interworking within the context of different national decisions in each country. FIFTH, Given all of this, it is not at all clear to me that the INTERNET should become and ADMD, or even an PRMD, since it is already and un-named Service Management Domain (and working quite well in this mode). I should note that the RARE R&D-MHS is another "un-named" Service Management Domain that is working quite well (without its name appearing in any ORAddresses). [Routing tables really can do the job!] Cheers...\Stef