RFC 1168 (rfc1168) - Page 2 of 18

Intermail and Commercial Mail Relay services

RFC 1168      Intermail and Commercial Mail Relay Services     July 1990


   The Internet is an interconnected system of networks using the SMTP
   mail protocol, which includes the ARPANET, MILNET, NSFNET, and about
   700 other networks; mail relays allow the exchange of mail with
   BITNET, CSNET, and the UUCP networks as well.  To the users, this
   Internet looks like one large mail system with at least 100,000
   computers and at least 400,000 users.  Figure 1 illustrates the path
   of a message sent by a user on one Internet host to a user on another
   Internet host.  For more details on the Internet and connected
   networks (see Appendix A).

   As commercial mail systems came into popular use, it became clear
   that a mail link between the Internet and the commercial mail systems
   was necessary (see Appendix B).  More and more commercial and
   research entities needed to communicate with the Internet research
   community, and many of these organizations (for one reason or
   another) were inappropriate candidates for Internet sites.  The
   Intermail and CMR services allow these groups to communicate with
   Internet users by purchasing electronic mail services from commercial
   companies.

INTERMAIL

   Intermail is an experimental mail forwarding system that allows users
   to send electronic mail across mail system boundaries. The use of
   Intermail is nearly transparent, in that users on each system are
   able to use their usual mail programs to prepare, send, and receive
   messages.  No modifications to any of the mail programs on any of the
   systems are required.  However, users must put some extra addressing
   information at the beginning of the body of their messages.

               >>

   The earliest version of Intermail was developed in 1981, by Jon
   Postel, Danny Cohen, Lee Richardson, and Joel Goldberg [1]. It ran on
   the TOPS-20 operating system and was used to forward VLSI chip
   specifications for the MOSIS project between the ARPANET and the
   Telemail system.  The original addressing model used in this system
   was called "Source Route Forwarding".  It was developed to handle
   situations in which a message might travel multiple hops before
   reaching its destination.

   Later, in 1983, Annette DeSchon converted Intermail into a more
   general-purpose mail-forwarding system, supporting forwarding between
   the Internet mail system and three commercial mail systems: Telemail,
   MCI Mail, and Dialcom [3,4].






Westine, DeSchon, Postel & Ward