Reply to RFC 1327 Mappings in X.500

[Michael Storz <[e-mail]>]

> 3) The "ommitted component" stuff fits very very badly into the open
> routing tree
>

Suppose we would agree with this opinion. Then we could decide:

   The mapping of empty components alone will not be supported with routing
   trees.

   To map X.400 addresses (to and from) all posssible components one level
   lower in the hierarchy of the address must be registered in the routing
   tree. For the migration period till this registration has been done,
   a gateway must use the appropriate part of the RARE mapping tables locally.

The advantage of this approach is:

- no change of the documents and of implementaions is needed
- empty organization is illegal, therefore all institutions which use such
  addresses should migrate to addresses with organization. If the address is not
  changed these organizations still have the possibility to register all OU1 in
  the routing tree.
- empty PRMD: This will happen often with commercial organizations and ADMDs.
  If these organizations want to have normal RFC 822 addresses, they or their
  ADMD should register the organization in the routing tree. If these
  organizations are not registered in the routing tree, then the addresses are
  mapped to

    /s=surname/..../o=organization/@administrative-domain.country   or

    /s=surname/..../o=organization/admd=administrative-domain/c=country/@gw

  which is valid and what this organization wanted.

  Adresses like

    [e-mail]

  which would eventually be mapped to

    /s=surname/..../prmd=organization/admd=administrative-domain/c=country/

  are invalid in RFC 822 and X.400 and therefore no problem.

After I brought up this problem, I would like to withdrawn my "defect report"
and go this direction. The only thing which should be done is to carefully
document this decison.

If we look at the RARE tables we see that more than 90 % of all entries with
empty O are from Germany and some from France and nearly none from other
countries. The remaining entries with empty PRMD should not be a problem because
if these organizations will participate in direct routing, that means routing
via X.500 and not a hierachical routing via ADMDs then these organizations will
be registered automatically in the routing tree for routing and then they can
specify in addition the mapping information.

In Germany there is already a beginning movement to change the O/R addresses.
One university has already changed their address, others are thinking about it
and will change if the pressure is strong enough. We have discussed this now at
several meetings here in Germany.

After we have changed already our ADMD from DBP to D400, we will change next
month the representation of RFC 822 addresses in X.400 from using ADMD=SPACE to
ADMD=d400-gw, because SPACE is not allowed for this purpose. With the same
argument we should also change the empty O. This will however again accelerate
the decision of some universities to leave the X.400 world :-(

Gruss

Michael

Regards,

Michael