CHAA006@vaxb.rhbnc.ac.UK (07/17/87)
[Carl - and anyone else attempting to send mail to Janet sites ...]
As far as I know, there are three 'official' gateways between Janet
(the U.K Joint Academic Network) and the InterNet; these are situated
at the University of Kent (UK.AC.UKC), University College London (UK.AC.UCL.CS)
and the Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory (UK.AC.RL.EARN).
Of these, Uk.Ac.Ukc is a UUCP-gateway, Uk.Ac.Rl.Earn is a BitNet gateway,
and Uk.Ac.Ucl.Cs is an Arpa gateway (they also have an EAN gateway at the
same site, which is in the process of being moved the the University
of London Computer Centre).
Janet has adopted 'Big-endian' naming conventions --- i.e. the leftmost
component of a sitename is the most significant, which for all UK Janet
sites will be UK; the second leftmost component will be the 'Community',
which for the moment appears restricted to AC (=Academic Community) and
CO (=Commercial).
Thus, UK sites address each other for mail purposes (let us consider
only mail) as (e.g.) Fred@Uk.Ac.Somesite.Somemachine.
The InterNet, on the other hand, had adopted little-endian naming; the
_rightmost_ component is the most significant. This is either an
internationally-agreed two letter code (e.g. UK), or a top-level
domain which has been 'devolved' from Arpanet usage (e.g. EDU, COM,
MIL, etc). InterNet sites therefore address each other as (e.g.)
Lucy@Somemachine.Somesite.EDU.
When sending mail from the InterNet to the UK, the UK gateway clearly
has to be specified in InterNet format (e.g. the Ucl gateway is known
to the InterNet as CS.UCL.AC.UK); the ultimate site can, for the
moment, be specified either in little- or big-endian notation, but
I am advised by UCL that little-endian is to be preferred. Thus, using
the UCL gateway as an example, an InterNet site could send mail to a
UK Janet site/user as :-
User%Somesystem.Somesite.AC.UK@CS.UCL.AC.UK
or to give a more specific example, to send mail to me at RHBNC, an
InterNet site could use
CHAA006%VAXB.RHBNC.AC.UK@CS.UCL.AC.UK
This is an intermediate arrangement; ultimately, I believe, it is intended
that the Internet name servers will recognise the top- and second level
domains UK and AC, where these occur in a non-gateway sitename, and
route the mail to the appropriate UK gateway. Thus it is intended that all
UK Janet sites shall appear to the InterNet as
User@Somesystem.Somesite.AC.UK
without explicit specification of the gateway to be used.
There is a complication: one of the names by which the RAL gateway is
known to BitNet (and hence to the InterNet) is AC.UK; one can therefore
send mail from the InterNet to a UK Janet user, via RAL, using
User%Uk.Ac.Somesite.Somesystem@AC.UK
It is not clear to me how AC.UK can exist both as a unique name for the
RAL gateway and as a component of the UCL gateway (CS.UCL.AC.UK); perhaps
one of my colleagues can enlighten us all there. Furthermore, the RAL
gateway is non-transparent: mail sent to a user via the RAL gateway
actually requires different routing and header information: the mail
should be _sent_ to MAILER@UKACRL (which is another BitNet name for RAL),
but the RFC-822 header should specify the final username and site, e.g.
To: CHAA006@UK.AC.RHBNC.VAXB
I hope that this clarifies matters a little; I should add that it has been
submitted by someone who has no connection with any of the major gateways,
other than as a user, and may well requires correction in the light of
more expert contributions.
Philip Taylor (Royal Holloway & Bedford New College; University of London; U.K)
Janet : chaa006@uk.ac.rhbnc.vaxa (or) chaa006@uk.ac.rhbnc.vaxb
([+Janet.000005181000] or [+Janet.000005181100])
Arpa : chaa006%vaxa.rhbnc.ac.uk@cs.ucl.ac.uk
(or) : chaa006%vaxb.rhbnc.ac.uk@cs.ucl.ac.uk
Bitnet/NetNorth/Earn: chaa006@vaxa.rhbnc.ac.uk (or) chaa006%rhbnc.vaxa@ac.uk
(or) : chaa006@vaxb.rhbnc.ac.uk (or) chaa006%rhbnc.vaxb@ac.uk