InfoMagic Standards 1994 January/InfoMagic Standards - January 1994.iso/inet/isoc/charts/q_a.txt

Text File | 1993-02-22 | 8KB | 145 lines

>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 <NIC.DDN.MIL>  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.