Routing names and addresses in the international MHS

Abstract

Similarly to physical mail, electronic mail needs information to be supplied with a message about its destination: the envelope information. For physical mail a name and address are written on the envelope containing the message. The sender (originator) trusts the postman's ability to read the address and deliver the message to the intended recipient. For physical mail this works well, because physical mailboxes do not move around a lot, and street and city names rarely change. People do not change their personal name too often, and postmen are clever guys. Apart from the personal name part, this stability of address is not found in electronic mail. On the contrary, electronic mailboxes do move around a lot, moving from computer to computer, or from organization to organization. Even the company's name or service provider's name can change, and systems are unfortunately not as smart as postmen. The X.400 standard (the 1988 version of the CCITT recommendations have been adopted by ISO as the ISO/IEC-10021 standard) specifies how to set up an international message handling system (MHS) and how to address electronic messages. The first standards were published in 1984, and since then the X.400 network slowly came to reality. The practice of addressing electronic messages has not developed as envisaged in the standards. Over the last couple of years this has caused a heated debate in the media and standardization world, concentrating on the issue of international PRMDs and the presence of a service provider's name (ADMD name) or country name in the X.400 address. Changing the standards to take into account current user wishes is not likely to happpen, since too much money and effort has been invested in the current X.400 network. This paper takes a closer look at the discrepancies between the user interpretation of naming, addressing and routing and the X.400 definitions. It tries to find an answer to the question of whether the X.400 standard should be modified to incorporate users' wishes, or if this can be achieved in another way.