[comp.protocols.iso.x400] Numerical surnames??

JPALME@com.qz.se (08/21/89)

I am working on the design of a new X.400 system, and would like
to have advice on a detail.
     
Normally, we will of course put human-readable names in the Surname
field of O/R-names. But in certain exceptional cases, for example
for secret mailboxes, it would be natural for us to take the
internal mailbox number, which is an integer, into the Surname
field.
     
Would anyone advice against this? If so, we could add a character
like M in front of the number.
     
Of course there should not be any risk of mixing up surnames
with X.121 addresses, but some systems may have problem with
wholly numerical surnames?
     

Stef@NRTC.NORTHROP.COM (Einar Stefferud) (08/22/89)

Hello Jacob -- et al  --

I cannot see any special reason to avoid using digit strings for names,
but I can see security reasons for not allowing the use of "internal
mailbox numbers" for surnames.  In brief, I would suggest not using any
simply related numbers from internals of your system as published names
of any kind.  It just makes breaking in that much easier if someone
knows what they are looking for.  Better to have all names be mapped by
internal tables to their real internal mailboxes.  This is especially so
for secure mail.  Even though you might like assume that you can trust
all members of a secure community, you surely know that you cannot trust
such assumptions.  Best...\Stef 

JOHANL@com.qz.se (08/22/89)

Why not use the Numeric form of O/R address that was invented
for these kind of things.