Xref: utzoo comp.mail.misc:1836 comp.protocols.tcp-ip:6917
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!pritch
From: pritch@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Norm Pritchett)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc,comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Seeking advice on establishing a LARGE centralized mail system
Message-ID: <45423@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 26 Apr 89 15:08:29 GMT
Followup-To: poster
Organization: Ohio State Univ Computer & Info Science
Lines: 42


I would like to hear from individuals experienced in establishing a
centralized electronic mail service for a large user base (4 figures
or greater). 

Here at the Ohio State University we have a campus-wide token ring
network interconnecting individually-administered departmental networks
whose sizes range from a handful to hundreds.  It is not very easy to
provide a total count of hosts but it should be pretty close to a thousand.

Some of our departments already implement one scheme or another for
providing uniform addressing of mail for its users such that a sender
need not be concerned with which particular machine to direct the
message to.  In these cases, the sender addresses the message to the
department's Internet domain name (e.g. user@eng.ohio-state.edu or
user@cis.ohio-state.edu) and the message is delivered to the recipient
on his "home" machine.

We would like to implement a similar scheme at the university-wide
level where a sender could address a message to
some-userid@ohio-state.edu and have the message delivered to the
recipient on his home system.  The major obstacle is with the
"some-userid" part: we wish it to be representative of the recipient's
real name (or actually be his real name) while at the same time have
it uniquely identify him/her among the 75,000+ faculty, staff and
students where there are numerous unresolvable name collisions.  A
format of Firstname.MI.Lastname which eliminates many collisions still
leaves many remaining.

If there is anyone who has experience in setting up a similar thing or
has constructive advise, please correspond with me via mail at one of the
following Internet addresses:

	pritch@cis.ohio-state.edu
	npritchett@osu-20.ircc.ohio-state.edu
	pritchett@eng.ohio-state.edu

-- 

Norm Pritchett, The Ohio State University College of Engineering Network
Internet: pritchett@eng.ohio-state.edu	BITNET: TS1703 at OHSTVMA
UUCP: pritch@sydney.columbus.oh.us	CCNET: ENG::PRITCHETT (6172::PRITCHETT)