>I have a few basic questions: > - who is responsible for internet mail addresses? > - how can a customer get one? > - who maintains the hosts for this great store and > forward system? > - is there any other information you can provide me? > >One of the things that is interesting to several of my >customers is the ability to send large files (1-10meg) to >anyone on the internet at a relatively inexpensive rates. >Currently SprintMail is cost prohibitively expensive for file >transfer of this size. This can be a sequel to my Questions Frequently Asked The responsibility for internet mail address is split. All Internet addresses (i.e., the actual Internet IP address and the Domain Name System names consistin g of much of the portion to the right of the (at) sign) are technically obtained from the Internet Assigned Number Authority (IANA). This responsibility has been largely delegated. The IP numbers are obtained from a Network Information Center in Chantilly VA with the address The DNS names at the top levels are delegated to various authorities depending on the domain (i.e., for the .US domain. The whole scheme is distributed, so that whoever gets an address, then has the ability to further parcel out sub-addresses. Everyone in these chains must also maintain a reference server, so you can automatically find out what has been assigned to whom. When you get down to the host computer level, then it's the responsibility of the host administrator to maintain the mail accounts on that machine. It all works and has grown so fast - there are now 1.2 million host computers, 8000 networks, and about 10 million users around the world in 117 different countries - because of the explosion in PCs, workstations, LANs, the utility of the standards, and the incentive in effect inter- organization, interpersonal communication. One of the great customer features of SprintLink is that Sprint handles all this for the customer. This is NOT a store and forward system - as the term is normally used - except for certain applications such as gatewaying mail to peripheral interconnected networks using other protocols. For this reason, the network services are highly reliable, i.e., you actually know that the mailgram has been provided to the foreign host. This makes it intrinsically faster and more reliable than say X.400 Each of the 1.2 million hosts are maintained by a lot of people around the world! And since at the present growth rate of 14 percent per MONTH, that number will equal the human population in 2001, there is a lot of education to do! Admittedly, however, this heterogeneity in administration remains a liability - but it is also an opportunity for nimble providers like Sprint who can help it's customers maximize their reliability. Get a copy of Ed Kroll's The Whole Internet from O'Reilly publishers, or Tracy Parker's Internet Companion from Prentice Hall to start. At a more detailed level, there is a new Internet Engineering Handbook that Prentice Hall just published, along with Marshall Rose's The Internet Message. The Internet Society (of which I'm V.P.) publishes an quarterly news magazine. I can also place you on a mailing list. And we're about to start an on-line network information center here at Sprint International. ------------------------- >Alan ... It was a toss in the dard granted. The reason the questions came up >was because of the fact that we are selling SprintLink. I had an interesting >conversation with one of my customers. He stated that one of the founding >fathers of TCP/IP wanted/wants to see it as the "world standard" replacingx.400 . >I doubt that would ever happen but ... I would like to understand this >technology and how it works. > We're dealing a little with apples and oranges here. TCP/IP unfortunately is often used two ways: 1) to refer specifically to two protocols (i.e., TCP and IP) used for open systens internetworking and 2) a whole suite of standards that includes messaging, network management, file transfer, knowledge discovery, gateways, news, video, voice, and on and on. These ARE world standards - all produced under the aegis of the Internet Society's standards making body, the Internet Architecture Board and Internet Engineering Task Force. Sprint is sponsoring their next meeting at Washington DC next week. As a matter of plain fact, these standards have long "replaced" the CCITT's standards. They preceded them in time and are about 2 orders of magnitude more ubiquitous. That doesn't mean that things like X.400 are going to go away. They will be there in the market, and Sprint and others will be addressing that market and providing useful gateways. On the other hand, it will remain a minor market compared to the Internet protocols - not so much because of their head start, but because the standards body involved is so much more dynamic, innovative, and thorough in producing optimal, implementable standards. I urge people to use the "business card test" around the world - look at what people put on their cards, and you get an idea where things are going. By the way, the next verion of Microsoft Windows will have TCP/IP built in as the "network glue." It's going to drive the market ballistic. And on the messaging front, the implementation of the new MIME multimedia and PEM privacy standards, among others, will further the exponential use of Internet based messaging. ----------------------------- Some minor clarifications: >Access to any single network gives you access to the entire Internet. Access can give you access to portions, depending on the service involved, the nature of the use, and your authorization. Many of the networks are those of large corporations, government agencies, or other institutions that carefully control access. >A user/host can become connected to the Internet by applying for >and recieving an Internet approved address from the National Science >Foundation. The NSF only controls access to its backbone and some of the other attached users. This is also an access issue and has nothing to do with addressing. >Hosts (and specfically mail systems) are maintained by the individual >users. Typically on the Internet, users will configure a UNIX workstation >as an Internet host, and run their mail system on the workstation. >The Internet is simply used for transporting mail. There are no >mail services (like SprintMail) on the Internet. A host can be anything from a PC, a LAN server, a workstation, a minicomputer, a mainframe, a supercomputer. Any operating system can be used, as long as the appropriate internet protocols are used - which can be not only TCP/IP, but decnet, sna, IS-IS, etc - although TCP/IP is by far the most popular. Mail constitutes a minor fraction of Internet use. The most used services are File Transfer, Network Administration, News distribution. And lastly, of course there are mail services like SprintMail on the Internet - of a variety of different flavors. >In response to your file transfer question, users are most likely not >using mail to send files. Instead they are using a TCP/IP based >File Transfer Protocol (FTP). The term Internet users use is >FTPing files from one host to another. Because most Internet access >provider have a flat rate (all you can drink) service structure, >the Internet can be a cost effective way to send large files. In fact mail is heavily used for moving files, if nothing else because it is so ubiquitous. Relatively fewer users have ftp capabilities, although FTP is easier and more convenient for moving large files. It is also possible to use Sun's NFS protocols or X-Windows over the network as highly convenient ways of accessing and moving files.