Re: Yet another X.400 vs SMTP question

Jon Crowcroft <J.Crowcroft@cs.ucl.ac.uk> Fri, 28 May 1993 08:49 UTC

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cc: Jock Gill <jgill@nsf.gov>, OSI-DS <osi-ds@cs.ucl.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Yet another X.400 vs SMTP question
In-reply-to: Your message of "Thu, 27 May 93 13:53:18 EDT." <9305271759.AA12878@uu5.psi.com>
Date: Fri, 28 May 1993 08:52:54 +0100
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From: Jon Crowcroft <J.Crowcroft@cs.ucl.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <9305280449.aa03083@CNRI.Reston.VA.US>


Conceptually, MOTIS  and Internet Mail 
provide very similar functionaility.  

SMTP + PEM + MIME + DNS MX Records and other useful internet services

X.400 + ODIF or other + X.500

However, in practice, although there are probably as many seperate
implementations of each, in terms of tried, tested, fielded and
operational systems, the Internet is at least 3 orders of magnitude
ahead of any other protocol suite - the only thing close in terms of
installed base of protocols is Novell, which does not as far as I'm
aware include a Mail System as part of its applcations, being a simple
low level file sharing mecahanism with concommittend low level (1-4)
protocols largely (albeit well designed and engineered!).

[ i am excluding single organisation networkls like IBM or DEC or
others internal systems as these have very few of the real world "Open
System" problems to overcome ]

as a site obliged to run X.400 (we wrote PP, after all, which is one
of the best implementations), i prefer to use mime/smtp/pem

of course, our system provides a single user interface, so i dont
really have to know....

indeed a great portion of the x.400 mail around probleably travels by
Internet anyhow..

 jon