RFC 1168 (rfc1168) - Page 1 of 18
Intermail and Commercial Mail Relay services
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
Network Working Group A. Westine
Request for Comments: 1168 A. DeSchon
J. Postel
C.E. Ward
USC/ISI
July 1990
INTERMAIL AND COMMERCIAL MAIL RELAY SERVICES
STATUS OF THIS MEMO
This RFC discusses the history and evolution of the Intermail and
Commercial mail systems. The problems encountered in operating a
store-and-forward mail relay between commercial systems such as
Telemail, MCI Mail and Dialcom are also discussed. This RFC provides
information for the Internet community, and does not specify any
standard. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
INTRODUCTION
The evolution of large electronic mail systems testifies to the
increasing importance of electronic mail as a means of communication
and coordination throughout the scientific research community.
This paper is a summary of the development of, and a status report
on, an experiment in protocol interoperation between mail systems of
different design. USC/Information Sciences Institute (ISI) began work
on this experiment in 1981 and over the years has provided an
evolving demonstration service for users to exchange mail between the
Internet and a few commercial mail systems.
Recently other organizations have begun to provide similar services,
demonstrating the ongoing need for interoperation of the Internet and
the commercial mail systems. We believe that ISI's pioneering work
in this area has promoted this expansion of service.
These systems include the Internet mail system, the US Sprint
Telemail system, the MCI Mail system, and the Dialcom systems. All of
the systems were designed to operate autonomously, with no convenient
mechanism to allow users of one system to send electronic mail to
users on another system.
The Intermail and Commercial Mail Relay (CMR) services described in
this paper were developed to provide a means for sending mail between
the Internet and these commercial mail systems.
Westine, DeSchon, Postel & Ward