Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ucsd!orion.oac.uci.edu!ucivax!gateway
From: Christian.Huitema@mirsa.inria.fr (Christian Huitema)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso.x400.gateway
Subject: Re: RFC-1148/2: what about underlines
Message-ID: <9103141550.AA02693@jerry.inria.fr>
Date: 14 Mar 91 15:57:40 GMT
Lines: 62
Approved: usenet@ICS.UCI.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of 12 Mar 91 17:02:19 +0000.
             <1695.668797339@UK.AC.UCL.CS>

In order to evaluate the real impact of blanks, underlines, quotes and
other amenities, I conducted a little experiment. I used the February
accounting files produced by our X.400 gateway, "kwai.inria.fr": it routed
6929 messages during that month. Then, I extracted all the addresses
which where mentionned in the envelops, which totals to 2759 addresses,
and I conducted a little analysis.

Out of the 6929 addresses, 332 used source route -- which forces a DD
notation. Out of this 332 source routed addresses, 317 originated in the UK.
Most of the source routing was bogus, with examples like:

	computer-science.manchester.ac.uk:romao@bchm1.aclcb.purdue.edu

which would redirect through the Manchester messages bound to the US.

In the 2759 addresses which I analysed, quotes where used five times,
for the following addresses:
	"CCF::EAMES"@hermes.mod.uk
	"CCF::GMD%hermes.mod.uk"@relay.mod.uk
	"CCF::MILNER"@hermes.mod.uk
	"grover%grover:atrc"@cs.ualberta.ca
	"ELEC!ROETHIG     "@enst.fr
The last address is probably the result of a user mistake. The first three
probably relate to an RFC to DECNET gateway, run for the UK ministry of
defense. The need of quoting results from the usage of the special character
":"; this could be easily alleviated if the gateway was a little more
clever, e.g. wrote its addresses as "EAMES@CCF.hermes.mod.uk". The fourth
address is probably buggy.

Out of the remaining 2754 addresses, 81 contained "special" characters, i.e.
characters that were neither alphabetical, nor numeric, nor an hyphen or a
dot. The special characters included:
    6: !
    1: #
   34: %
    1: +
    4: /
    2: =
    1: ?
   42: _
The question mark was found in the address:
	?!@#063#.uucp
which is indeed buggy. The bangs and percents result from attempts to assert
gateway addresses. The "/" resulted in one case from the RFC-822 notation of
an address generated at HP with the DD attribute "x4gate" (with 2 "=" signs),
and in another from the bogus address (invalid domain):

	postmaster/c@liuc.ucaen.inria.mcvax.fr

The "+" character was generated by Andrew:

	atkbb+Bad-Addresses@andrew.cmu.edu

The "#" character results from a creative gateway:

	kulander#kenneth%nersc.mfenet@ESNMRG.NERSC.gov

The "_" characters where found in bona fide user names.

All in all, this shows that the usage of quoting is extremely rare.

Christian Huitema