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From: barrett@Daisy.EE.UND.AC.ZA (Alan P. Barrett)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: Internetworking Guide (frequent posting)
Message-ID: <1991Mar26.161624.17804@Daisy.EE.UND.AC.ZA>
Date: 26 Mar 91 16:16:24 GMT
References: <9103222000.AA28621@sybil.cs.Buffalo.EDU> <1991Mar23.015752.5374@agate.berkeley.edu> <427@frcs.UUCP>
Organization: Univ. Natal, Durban, S. Africa
Lines: 49

In article <427@frcs.UUCP>, paul@frcs.UUCP (Paul Nash) writes:
> Thus spake raymond@math.berkeley.edu (Raymond Chen):
> >
> > SAPONET             the South African Post Office's X.25 network (#6550)
> >                     s873561@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au (Michael Barnett) reports
> >                     that the alleged gateway via
> >                         user%sapo.net.com@ames.arc.nasa.gov
> >                     simply bounces.  There seems to be some way to sneak
> >                     in via FidoNet; send mail to
> >                         MAILSRV.RURES@f4.n494.z5.fidonet.org
> >                     containing the message `SEND UNINODE' for details.
> >                     The postmaster for Saponet appears to be
> >                         Barrett.UNDEE@f4.n494.z5.fidonet.org

Thanks for bringing this misinformation to my attention, Paul.

Yes, Saponet is net number 6550 in the international X.25 world.

As Paul says, there is no mail service on Saponet, and no reason why
there should be a gateway at Ames.  Saponet is just an X.25 network,
linked to other X.25 networks around the world.  Of course, people are
free to use Saponet as a transport for electronic mail, with their own
protocols above the X.25 layer, and many people do so.

Sites belonging to UNINET-ZA (the South African academic and research
network) were reachable through a Fidonet gateway for some time before
the ZA top level domain was registered in November 1990, but the Fidonet
route to is deprecated now, and will go away some time.  UNINET-ZA has
absolutely nothing to do with SAPONET.  Further information about sites
belonging to UNINET-ZA is available from UNINET@FRD.AC.ZA.

I am certainly not the postmaster for SAPONET.  There is no postmaster
for SAPONET.

> I have been able to connect from Saponet to Tymnet, so I assume that
> a reverse connection is possible, but I do not know what the NUA would
> be to connect in this way.

It would be xxx6550yyyyyyyyzz, where xxx is whatever is needed on the
originating network to tell it you want to make a call to an address
that is on a different network (two likely values for xxx are either the
null string or the digit zero, but I think that other values are also
permitted by CCITT rules, and the choice will vary from one net to
another); yyyyyyyy is the SAPONET address; and zz is the subaddress (if
any).

--apb
Alan Barrett, Dept. of Electronic Eng., Univ. of Natal, Durban, South Africa
Internet: barrett@ee.und.ac.za           UUCP: m2xenix!quagga!undeed!barrett