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From: LVARIAN@PUCC.PRINCETON.EDU ("Lee C. Varian")
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: IBM's VNET
Message-ID: <9106012030.AA19492@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 1 Jun 91 19:22:15 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Distribution: world
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 34

Dear Daniel Murphy,  VNET is the name of IBM's internal RSCS network.
There is now a gateway between VNET and the Internet.  The gateway acts
as a filtering gateway and IBM users who wish to send or receive mail
from Internet users must register themselves to this gateway.

As of this time, a great many IBMers are registered to use the gateway.
You can inquire of the gateway to find out whether a particular IBMer
is registered (and what his/her Email address is) by sending mail to
nic@vnet.ibm.com  and just including as the subject line:
  whois name
The vnet gateway will respond with mail such as the following, which I
used to find out that John Hartmann (the developer of IBM's CMS Pipelines
product) was registered for the gateway.

>Date: Fri, 31 May 91 21:18:03 EDT
>From: nic@vnet.ibm.com
>To:   LVARIAN@PUCC.PRINCETON.EDU
>Subject: WHOIS Facility
>
>Hartmann, John is john@cphvm1.vnet.ibm.com
>
>Multiple requests may be made in a single note provided they do
>not exceed the daily limit of 25.

As this example illustrates, the Internet address for most IBM VNET users
whose VNET address might be user@node would be user@node.vnet.ibm.com .

You need also to be sensitive to the Acceptable Use Policies of NSFnet
and your midlevel network, which would disallow commercial activity (such
as placing an order over the network) but would allow other messages
which were of an educational or research nature.

I hope this helps.
  Lee Varian, Princeton University