Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!pacbell.com!mips!sdd.hp.com!usc!orion.oac.uci.edu!ucivax!gateway From: Christian.Huitema@mirsa.inria.fr (Christian Huitema) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso.x400 Subject: Re: "Internet to X.400" problem. Message-ID: <9105231555.AA08078@jerry.inria.fr> Date: 23 May 91 15:57:02 GMT Lines: 34 Approved: usenet@ics.uci.edu In-Reply-To: Your message of 23 May 91 15:29:03 +0000. <910523102746*/G=Alf/S=Hansen/OU=cs/O=uw-madison/PRMD=xnren/C=us/@MHS> Alf, I certainly do not advocate that the full RFC addresses of the form /G=Alf/S=Hansen/OU=cs/O=uw-madison/PRMD=xnren/C=us/@MHS should be used as "the general solution". They are gateway addresses, and have all the inconvenient of gateway addresses, including the risk to pass through more than one gateway that you mentionned. I merely wanted to warn you that there will be cases when Internet mail users see the address of they correspondant expressed in X.400 format, e.g. on the business card of the enthusiastic RARE MHS supporters. These MHS users will not necessarily have access to the mapping tables, even if these tables happen to be stored in the X.500 DIT or in the Internet DNS. And a (fallback) solution that does not require them to "flip a coin, guess a mapping" would certainly be useful. In fact, one can certainly envisage scenarios of the kind: sends an E.Mail to /G=Alf/S=Hansen/OU=cs/O=uw-madison/PRMD=xnren/C=us/@MHS This is routed to the nearest MHS gateway, which routes it through X.400. /G=Alf/S=Hansen/X.400=etc.../ receives the mail, and replies. The reply is routed through the nearest Internet gateway. That gateway is fully supplied with tons of mapping tables, and the reply arrive to with the a properly mapped "From" address, e.g. . Joe User is at this stage very happy, and does not use the "unmapped" form anymore. I imagine that if you fail to organize this receipe for happiness in your MHS specs, some of the IETF working group members are going to advocate quite loudly that you missed something... Christian Huitema