Will@uunet.uu.net (06/21/91)
Can someone give details about how Sun and Wollongong have
implemented the X.400 Message Transfer Agent in UNIX? Is
the intent to gateway SMTP names to X.400 names, or in theory
could a single user agent simultaneously use SMTP and X.400
transfer agents to send mail to the respective domains?
Thanks,
Will Estes Internet: Will@cup.portal.com
UUCP: apple!cup.portal.com!WillPeter.Vanderbilt@eng.sun.com (Peter Vanderbilt) (06/22/91)
> Can someone give details about how Sun and Wollongong have > implemented the X.400 Message Transfer Agent in UNIX? Is > the intent to gateway SMTP names to X.400 names, or in theory > could a single user agent simultaneously use SMTP and X.400 > transfer agents to send mail to the respective domains? The current Sun products (SunNet MHS) use the gateway approach, mapping between RFC 822/SMTP and X.400 as specified in RFC 987. Pete
Stef@ics.uci.edu (Einar Stefferud) (06/22/91)
The answer (unofficial -- I do not work for Wollongong) is that Wollongong is based on PP from ISODE, and PP is a "protocol independent switch" which includes an RFC987/1148 gateway in its processes, and it can switch both X.400 and SMTP mail, as well as convert between the two, all in a single queue. PP uses MTA and gateway technology that vendors can only ignore at their peril. Cheers...\Stef
david@twg.com (David Herron) (06/22/91)
> The answer ... is that Wollongong is based on PP from ISODE Hmm.. I hadn't heard PP described this way before, but this is the case. It is currently called WIN/MHS, and it is more than just PP-for-System-V but to go into any more depth would start being commercial ;-). It may change names into Pathway/something but that is unclear at the moment ... > PP uses MTA and gateway technology that vendors can only ignore at > their peril. Cheers...\Stef OOooo! This sounds dangerous! David
cwm@sooner.palo-alto.ca.us (Chris Moore) (06/23/91)
portal!cup.portal.com!Will@uunet.uu.net writes: >Can someone give details about how Sun and Wollongong have >implemented the X.400 Message Transfer Agent in UNIX? Is >the intent to gateway SMTP names to X.400 names, or in theory >could a single user agent simultaneously use SMTP and X.400 >transfer agents to send mail to the respective domains? From what I understand about both Sun's and TWG's X.400 products as well as some other similar ones you are almost always in the position of gatewaying between the two communities and that being well known to the users of the system. In some cases (IBM's AIX 3.0?) there is a user agent that is intented to apear as if it is in both communities and provide access to the various service elements --- presumably this is done by with a gateway and some special extensions to carry information from the community that the UA is really in to the other.... does that help? - Chris
cwm@sooner.palo-alto.ca.us (Chris Moore) (06/26/91)
In an earlier article I wrote: > ....... In some cases (IBM's >AIX 3.0?) there is a user agent that is intented to apear as if >it is in both communities and provide access to the various >service elements --- presumably this is done by with ........ Someone pointed out that I wasn't real clear in the above so I'm going to take another stab at it: In essence, with both TWG's and Sun's products as well as others in the market you are getting an X.400 capable transport system and an X.400/SMTP gateway to go along with your SMTP system. They provide different degrees of integration between the two transport systems but at this point these products are not providing you fundamentally new user agents. So if you are dealing with this type of product you will have existing popular interfaces (mailx, mh, elm, mailtool, etc.) available to you. For all practical purposes these interfaces are anchored in one community (SMTP) and must use a gateway to get mail to recipients in the other community (X.400). By having an interface that is "anchored" into the SMTP community you are going to be working with SMTP style addresses, header fields, etc.. X.400 has a different notion of these items. A gateway provides the mechanism to get between the two interpretations. Rarely is this totally transparent to the user. I'm aware of at least one product that uses a hybrid approach by taking MH and extending it to make it use X.400 transparently. The idea being that the same user-interface is attached directly to the X.400 system as well as the SMTP system. This has the advantage of allowing the user to directly access X.400 features that are otherwise not available in SMTP (i.e., multi-part bodies and binary encoded information). Of course it also has its disadvantages -- messages may be fundamentally different depending on the community they are from (X.400 or SMTP) -- for example an address for an X.400 users will appear in its native format which is quite different than the SMTP address. I believe this is bad since it puts the user in the position of thinking out the gateway process (i.e., is Bob an X.400 user or an SMTP user?). Back to the original question: > portal!cup.portal.com!Will@uunet.uu.net writes: > >Can someone give details about how Sun and Wollongong have > >implemented the X.400 Message Transfer Agent in UNIX? Is > >the intent to gateway SMTP names to X.400 names, or in theory > >could a single user agent simultaneously use SMTP and X.400 > >transfer agents to send mail to the respective domains? By my understanding, in both the Sun and Wollongong case you are still dealing with the same SMTP based user interfaces that you had before getting their X.400 products. This means that you will be using a gateway to get between SMTP and X.400. In order to interface to both transports (X.400 & SMTP) directly then a new/modified user agent it needed. - Chris