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From: howard@cos.com (Howard C. Berkowitz)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans
Subject: Re: SMTP--MHS gateway? (was Re: SMTP Email gateway)
Message-ID: <46175@cos.com>
Date: 18 Jun 91 14:59:30 GMT
References: <7816@spdcc.SPDCC.COM> <04ig41w164w@wwoh.com> <59923@aurs01.UUCP>
Reply-To: howard@cos.UUCP (Howard C. Berkowitz)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Corporation for Open Systems, McLean, VA
Lines: 34

Many UNIX-based X.400 systems have an inherent SMTP (or at least
UNIX mail) to X.400 capability, due to the architecture
of the overall messaging product.  Remember that X.400 is
effectively a mailer, not a user interface.

A common way of implementing X.400 on UNIX is to leave
sendmail as is, and let it build the normal uucp queues.
Periodically, crontab scans the uucp queues and looks for
messages with X.400 addresses.  Those messages are then
converted to X.400 format.  The uucp mailer and X.400
Message Transfer Agent are invoked independently to send
out queued messages.

This explanation deals with creating mail to send out.
As long as a system can create UNIX mail and get it to the
queues of a machine with UNIX and X.400 mailers, the
necessary conversions can take place.

This mixed architecture of UNIX and X.400 mail was used 
in Transport Canada's open systems demonstration at the 
recent COS conference in Vancouver.  Five different UNIX
systems were interconnected, not all of which had X.400.
In the demonstration, X.400 was used both between groups
of UNIX systems and (conceptually) to non-UNIX X.400 
(e.g., on a mainframe). 

I hasten to add that the above was the user's demonstration,
not a formal COS architecture.  Standard disclaimers also
apply. 
-- 
howard@cos.com OR  {uunet,  decuac, sun!sundc}!cos!howard
(703) 883-2812 [W] (703) 998-5017 [H]
DISCLAIMER:  Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the Corporation
for Open Systems, its members, or any standards body.