mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton) (09/10/86)
In article <2303@utai.UUCP> lamy@utai.UUCP (Jean-Francois Lamy) writes: >Just what are you complaining about? Such information would be useful >only for querying a registry, and I've never had to use anything >like this in the system I've been using for 2 years (EAN). > >In fact, the X.400 networks in Canada, Norway, Sweden, Italy and >Switzerland all use domain-based addressing exclusively, and >gatewaying is absolutely transparent (even to .uucp, .edu, .com, >.bitnet and some of .uk). This comes as a surprise to me, having been told by Europeans that EAN is not really very X.400. (It's an ARPA style domain mail system with an X.400 MTA interface.) Now I happen to LIKE ARPA-style domain systems, but the last I heard, EAN-style systems would have great difficulty sending mail to a true X.400 spirit system with arbitary attributes. (Perhaps EAN has fixed this since I heard.) I also understood that while EAN was being installed in many European sites, it was because there was nothing else available, and Europe was writing some more X.400 spirited software which they planned to use instead of EAN. And I would be very surprised to find out that the X.400 networks themselves were set up to use domains as the network addressing standard. (It would be a pleasant surprise, however.) Perhaps some folks in Europe can set the record straight. Mark
sample@ubc-ean.UUCP (Rick Sample) (09/12/86)
In article <2530@cbosgd.UUCP> mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton) writes: >This comes as a surprise to me, having been told by Europeans that >EAN is not really very X.400. (It's an ARPA style domain mail >system with an X.400 MTA interface.) EAN is completely X.400. The limitation in the first distribution of EAN is that it cannot generate or handle arbitrary X.400 addresses, it uses an EAN specific subset. Although the user interface appears ARPA-like, the internals have nothing to do with any ARPA protocols. > Now I happen to LIKE ARPA-style >domain systems, but the last I heard, EAN-style systems would have >great difficulty sending mail to a true X.400 spirit system with >arbitary attributes. (Perhaps EAN has fixed this since I heard.) The first distribution did indeed have these problems, although they were overcome by construction of gateways that performed address translations. This method was employed over a year ago to interconnect with an experimental X.400 system at KDD, Japan. Note that almost all X.400 implementations use only a subset of the X.400 addressing attributes. The next disribution of EAN will be able to accept and generate arbitrary X.400 addresses, using an string encoding based on Steve Kille's RFC. The current development version of EAN has exchanged messages with other X.400 implementations which used different addressing schemes. Rick Sample, University of British Columbia