jdudeck@POLYSLO.CALPOLY.EDU (John R. Dudeck) (01/13/90)
I have a question that I hope will arouse some discussion in this rather sleepy group :^) Does anyone know if and how soon the major E-mail networks might become X.400 compliant? How much would this impact existing operations? Will it be possible to retain existing user interfaces? On the other hand, isn't it advantageous for them to go to the increased services of X.400 as soon as possible? Or is there not enough market demand? In particular I am interested in EasyLink, which I use in my work. An organization I am involved with uses EasyLink, and we are wondering about what to look forward to as we increase our international E-mail usage. Actually, right now I am a new Master's level student, and am starting to look around for a thesis topic related to X.400. I realize the above questions aren't on the level of Master's research...yet. But as I get into the area, I am looking forward to some worthwhile discussions in this group! -- John Dudeck "You want to read the code closely..." jdudeck@Polyslo.CalPoly.Edu -- C. Staley, in OS course, teaching ESL: 62013975 Tel: 805-545-9549 Tanenbaum's MINIX operating system.
pays@mars.emse.fr (Paul-Andre Pays) (01/17/90)
> > I have a question that I hope will arouse some discussion in this rather > sleepy group :^) Sure, it will! > Does anyone know if and how soon the major E-mail networks might become > X.400 compliant? How much would this impact existing operations? Will > it be possible to retain existing user interfaces? On the other hand, > isn't it advantageous for them to go to the increased services of X.400 > as soon as possible? Or is there not enough market demand? I don't know exactly the situation in the US, but may give you a hint about Europe. 1. The RARE (Reseaux Associes de la Recherche Europeene) initiative through the RARE MHS program has set up and is running a X.400 mail network accross 19 countries in Europe. It now includes more than 400 nodes using X.400. Moreover EUnet (the european branch of UUnet, more than 700 nodes) which is now using RFC-822 smtp is actively planning its migration towards OSI (including X.400 MOTIS). The plan is twofold: change network tu use and provide ISO underlying service, change News and Mail application to the ISO equivalent. Last, EARN (the european branch of bitnet) has also shown its willingness to move toward ISO, X.400. nevertheless the deadline has not been fixed and it is expected to last for a rather long period of time. The only short term goal is to replace the IBM transport level protocols by their ISO counterpart (X25 based). products are available for nearly all Unix boxes, for most big manufacturers propietary OS, for OS2/DOS PC Lans. Public domain products are available at least for research and education (ISODE PP, INRIA MPLUS,...) A few leading edge small/medium sized software houses have jumped over the bandwagon are have the products and skills to provide customized applications and a sound service (such as MARBEN, SYNC, in France or Coconet in germany, and many others). Many big companies and/or public administration have just started or are really close to make the step. The situation is now really RIPE. 2. new or existing mailers (UA)? This is up to the end user, and the situation is moving fast. Up to now X.400 UAs were rather poor in term of user friendliness compared to MH, mailtool, XMH, ELM,... Moreover, we have a few nice RFC-987 compliant gateway products enabling to talk X.400 while still using existing RFC-822 mailers (UAs). This year many X.400 providers are delivering nice, window based user interface to real X.400 mail. Public services in several countries are running smooth, with software available for various systems to use them. The demand is increasing very fast, so I personaly believe that the shift will occur sooner than generally expected. Once you have a sound user interface will you appreciate to lack the niceties of X.400 such as nice reporting mechanism, multi part contents, ability to "carry" multimedia messages...? > > In particular I am interested in EasyLink, which I use in my work. An > organization I am involved with uses EasyLink, and we are wondering about > what to look forward to as we increase our international E-mail usage. Sorry no knowledge of this one... > > Actually, right now I am a new Master's level student, and am starting to > look around for a thesis topic related to X.400. I realize the above > questions aren't on the level of Master's research...yet. But as I get > into the area, I am looking forward to some worthwhile discussions in > this group! Several students in my research group presented Thesis about or around X.400. Eg now one is working on the distributed administration of a X.400 based mail network (including RFC-822 gateways), another one on X.400 use for multimedia messages (including voice). I would suggest not to take X.400 as such as a topic, nor to stay too close to existing X.400 but to develop about new applications in the family; eg. I also directed one thesis about the use of X.400 for file transfer, and one about a distributed conferencing system based on X.400. Another aspect with a lot of potential for research is the X.500 directory services combined with various message based application, especially in the field of CSCW (aka groupware), for which we are also putting some research effort. Other aspects include new applications such EDI, EFT. Much of them require a high level of security, and this is also in my mind a nice topic for research for which we have a couple of ideas and plans I really bet you find your (put here the word or expression you prefer; i would say "tasse de the") in the area. Many research teams in leading research institutons such as INRIA in France, GMD in germany, UCL and Nottingham in the UK are doing a really nice work in the area too. -- PAP X.400: C=FR; ADMD=ATLAS; PRMD=emse; S=pays internet: pays@emse.fr
dfk@cwi.nl (Daniel Karrenberg) (01/19/90)
> "Paul-Andre Pays" <pays@mars.emse.fr> writes: > Moreover EUnet (the european branch of UUnet, more than 700 nodes) which > is now using RFC-822 smtp is actively planning its migration towards OSI > (including X.400 MOTIS). The plan is twofold: change network tu use and > provide ISO underlying service, change News and Mail application to the > ISO equivalent. Thank you Paul-Andre for making others aware of the EUnet transition plans. Let me give a more up to date report on the situation: EUnet - is not the European branch of UUnet but a cooperative user funded network run under the auspices of the European Unix Systems User Group (EUUG) - currently serves 1196 organisations in 19 European countries - (consists of 2503 externally visible nodes) We have long stopped quoting the number EUnet nodes because this is not a well defined nor a significant number. Especially the bigger organisations hide their local MTAs behind gateway MTAs. The actual number of computers using EUnet services is estimated to be between one and two orders of magnitude larger. - currently uses RFC822 based mail over SMTP/TCP/IP and rmail/UUCP - has an agreed transition strategy to OSI protocols The strategy works exactly the other way as descibed above: - first make ISO services available over the current network - then phase out the old services as much as possible - then change the lower layers to use only ISO protocols - has an agreed stepwise transition plan - *BUT* has taken no action yet to implement the plan because the EUnet users don't see the need for it and the benefits of it (yet). Currently there is much more user demand for IP based services. So the bottom line is: Yes there is a plan. No there are no decisions to implement it yet. The main reasons: - no benefit perceived by the users - other services more important to users - scarce resources This does not mean it will never happen. My *personal* opinion is that it will happen as soon -and not sooner- as there are good multimedia UAs around and people using "the old RFC822 stuff" will get messages like: There was a nice little picture here, but your mail protocol doesn't support this. (Son of RFC987, your friendly gateway) Regards Daniel Karrenberg EUUG Network Executive