BOARD@BITNIC.BITNET (BITNET Board of Trustees) (11/20/87)
The City University of New York, Princeton University, Cornell University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology have each committed to provide gateway service for electronic mail between the BITNET network and the Internet. Current gateway services provided by the University of Wisconsin (WISCVM) will end on December 15, 1987. Prior to that date, at least two of the above announced gateways will be in operation in parallel with WISCVM - there will be no interruption in gateway services. Prior to a regionalization plan and significant coordination with the Internet, the most expeditious approach is to name the first few gateways the same, namely, INTERBIT. That would mean that any gateway-destined mail that landed at any INTERBIT node would be appropriately handled. This change will be reflected in the December DOMAIN NAMES file which is used for MAILER generation; users need not do anything - mail will go automatically to the closest gateway. This is a transition measure necessitated by the time frame, by the complexity of more desirable solutions, and by the need to coordinate more with the Internet. Plans are to regionalize gateway service between the networks in order to balance traffic flow and increase reliability. Several other institutions are seriously considering functioning as gateways. An analysis of topologically best locations for such gateways will be conducted under the auspices of the BITNET Board of Trustees' Technical Committee; and the BITNET Network Information Center will coordinate regionalization plans and associated software modifications. (Please note reference to Internet, rather than ARPANet, and Internet's inclusion of ARPANet, NSFNet, NYSERNET and the other regional networks.) BITNET Board of Trustees