[comp.protocols.iso.x400.gateway] draft RFC on X.400 to Internet addressing

S.Kille@CS.UCL.AC.UK (Steve Kille) (07/18/89)

Robert,

As we have discussed privately, I believe that your spec is
unworkable.  (Eeven if it was, a major reason for having 987 in the first
place was so that gateways would all do the same thing.  Therefore we need
to have a single mapping specification).


I agree with you that the maintenace of tables is a pain.  However, it is a
reality that the X.400 and 822 domain worlds are not under a single control.
A specification, which assumes that these namespaces are allocated in
parallel (as yours does) is doomed.   

In 897 there are 3 cases.

1) Where there is common control (e.g., UK Acadeic Community) a mapping can
be achieved with a single (or small number) of table entries.

2) Where there is no common allocation, but a desirablity to give mappings
which are clean to the end users, this can be achieved by maintenance of
table entries - which in effect define the mappings between the two
administrative spaces.

3) Where there is no common control, and no effort to maintain tables, an
escape is given to preserve generality (LHS encoding for 822, and DD for
X.400).   


Sorry to be so negative



Steve