paul@frcs.UUCP (Paul Nash) (11/22/90)
We have a client who has (foolishly?) invested heavily in a PC LAN-based mail system called ``Courier''. They have some 20+ Novell LANS with Courier installed, and about 10000 users (!). The users are mostly quite naive (in computer terms) and prefer Courier features such as picking the recipient off a menu (of 10000 possibles!) to having to remember user names. The LANs are all interlinked, and PC users can send mail to other PC users, via their Ethernet backbone. They now want to link their PC mail systems to a bunch of Unix machines, also on the same Ethernet. They also want to talk to the rest of the world, via the Internet. Telnet and FTP between PCs and Unix is easy, thanks to the packet drivers. Currently, PC users who want to send mail to Unix people have to get a Unix account, telnet to the Unix box containing that account and send normal Unix mail. Mail in the reverse direction is even more difficult (create an account for the recipient, etc). There is a Courier/SMTP gateway available from Courier, but this would cost more than the initial installation. Courier does not Novell's MHS as its transport agent, but has a proprietry agent, which carries the mail in _encrypted_ format. As I see it, we have the following options: 1) Purchase the SMTP gateway from Courier, and hope that it works 2) Purchase the MHS gateway from Courier (which is probably cheaper), and hack up an SMTP/UUCP/whatever interface. This will not be a terribly slick interface, as MHS user names are 10 upper- case characters, as are system names. 3) Purchase the Courier API libraries, and try to hack up a new gateway from scratch. This would mean that users would have to put most of the Internet address into the document itself (not good for beginners) and mail to a dummy user account. 4) Scrap everything and buy/develop a new system. This would allow us to integrate the two types of network, and would also allow us to provide network news to PC users. We favour option 4), for fairly obvious reasons, but it will take both time and money (probably more than option 1)). Does anyone out there know whether there are existing products that integrate nicely between PC and Unix mail systems? What are the de-facto standards for such links (NNTP for news, SMTP for mail?)? Is there a protocol like SMTP to link a mail _user_ to a remote mailbox (like NNTP does for news)? Can NNTP handle updating a central `.newsrc' for a remote user, so that s/he can log on from _any_ workstation on _any_ network, or is this not very realistic? Are there any other questions that we should be asking? All and any comments would be appreciated. I _do_ follow the news, but our feed is quite erratic, so mail would be appreciated (as welll as posting?). I will summarise for the net once I have some clear responses. -------- -------- -------- -------- "Vanity of vanities", saith the Preacher, "vanity of vanities; all is vanity"