The Internet extends beyond its physical presence of computers linked together by direct connections. Internet mail now reaches almost all major computer services and networks, including many bulletin board system (BBS) networks. This connectivity solves the obvious problem of how someone on one computer service or network can send information to someone on a different service or network. Because most services charge monthly fees, maintaining a separate account on each service could be ruinous to your finances. And snail mail (the plain old post office) is just too slow and inefficient to someone who has experienced the world of electronic mail. How do you keep just a single account and still send mail to people on other networks? This chapter answers this question in detail.
The simple solution to internetwork communication is to hook two services together using a gateway—a device that passes messages from one network to another and handles all formatting and addressing problems that may come up. But gateways take time to set up. You have to program the interface to the gateway on both services. Both services must work together to decide the best way to handle any problems that are sure to arise (such as what to do with messages from one service that are too long for the other to handle). Someone has to set up the gateway hardware, operate it, and handle billing. Now consider that as the number of services grows, the number of gateways you need to set up also grows. GEnie has to be able to send messages to CompuServe, America Online, MCI Mail, Prodigy, and more. And any new service must set up gateways to all the existing services. This confusion is obviously fodder for a good number of mental breakdowns.
What is needed is a central service that can handle messages from and to each of the existing services—GEnie doesn't send messages to SprintMail; it sends them to the central service and the central service sends the mail to SprintMail. In this way, each service maintains only a single gateway to the central service. New services can use the already established format of the central service, obviating the need to reinvent the wheel each time. This central service should be widespread, shouldn't be owned by a direct competitor of any of the existing services, and should have reasonable rates. Of course, this central service is the Internet.
Strictly speaking, the Internet actually is a competitor to the existing services because it offers the same attractions the services offer. People who don't have Internet access through school or business usually acquire access through an information service—and many of the big services realize users could choose them. Delphi has taken this concept to heart and has become just an Internet service provider.
One remaining problem still exists: how to address mail to someone at another site. Many services use their own unique user naming scheme. The most obvious example is CompuServe's octal addressing scheme, where accounts are represented as 12345,678. Not only do you have to worry about getting the mail to CompuServe, you have to know that Internet doesn't like commas in addresses, nor does it like spaces—which is a problem for other networks.
The easiest way to find someone's address is to ask them. If they don't know, their service can give address information on request. As with snail mail, after you have an address that works, you can settle down to worrying about the content of your messages.
However, sometimes you have an account at another site and you need to send something now, or sometimes you cannot easily ask a person's address. Suppose that you are having a problem with a game, and instead of trying to get through telephone lines that are chronically busy, you want to contact the manufacturer electronically. (Many companies and organizations have service representatives on CompuServe. You can send a detailed description of a problem and, surprisingly often, you receive an informative and helpful response in return.) But contacting the representative to ask his or her Internet address can be troublesome. In another example from Usenet, Rush Limbaugh has a CompuServe account and apparently gives out only the CompuServe address. Because many people want to send fan mail and hate mail his way, a frequent request in several newsgroups is "How do I send mail to him from Internet?" This chapter covers these addressing issues.
The basic Internet mail address format is userid@site.domain. The userid is the person's account identification at that site. A user ID can be rdippold, RonDippold, ron_dippold, or abc1138—whatever format the site chooses to use. The site is the name the receiving site has given itself and is usually fairly obvious. CompuServe's site name is compuserve; America Online's site name is aol. The domain is one of several larger groupings of sites. The two most common domains are edu and com, which are usually U.S. educational and commercial sites, although exceptions do exist. In many countries outside the United States, the domain name is a two-character country abbreviation, such as au for Australia.
This basic format is extensible—jsmith@foo.bar.bozo.edu is a perfectly valid address. Likewise, you sometimes see extensions before the user ID, separated from the rest of the address with % or !. These extensions give additional routing information for sites that need it.
Regardless of the extensions used, all modern services that offer Internet mail use some version of this basic format to do addressing.
If anything is faster than the speed at which information moves, it's the speed at which information goes obsolete. All the information in this chapter should be accurate at the time it is written (early 1995). But the material will go out of date quickly. Luckily, aging usually occurs because a new service arrives and the information is simply less complete rather than inaccurate. In that case, if you want to get mail to a new service not described in this book, you can use the information in this book as an example (or you can just ask the service). Rarely will information in this book actually change, but it may happen. Luckily, the bigger the service, the less likely the change; the information here on how to send mail to CompuServe should be valid for a long, long time. Just keep in mind that anything in the computer world is mercurial.
If you have access to Usenet, the groups comp.mail.misc, alt.internet.services, and alt.online-service should keep you up to date with the latest information. Alternatively, a fairly complete and periodically updated list of services and how to reach them is available by sending Internet mail to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu. Include the following line in the body of the message: send usenet/news.answers/mail/inter-network-guide.
The account mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu is a standard Internet mail account; you may have to see one of the following entries to determine how to send mail to this account from your site. For example, from CompuServe, you send the mail to >INTERNET:mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu. The send command in the body of the message you are mailing stays the same for any site.
If you need more help, you can find several useful tips in "Services that Provide Gateways," later in this chapter.
Mail sent or received usually ends up costing someone money. Often, the recipient pays if you send mail from the Internet; because the recipient's commercial service has no way to charge you for the message, the service charges the recipient instead, like postage due. You really shouldn't send mail to someone unless you know the recipient is willing to accept the mail or it will not cost them anything; perhaps the recipient told you to send the mail or they advertised their account number. Most technical support accounts fall into the latter category.
The pricing (and the pricing scheme) changes even faster than the information—about once a year on average. Therefore, this chapter does not give rates; check with your service provider for information.
This section explains how to send mail to and from the major services. As an example, Chris Smith is exchanging mail on the various services with Pat Jones, who is on the Internet as pjones@foo.bar.edu. Notice that addresses such as pjones@foo.bar.edu are in monospaced type to set them off from the surrounding text. Parts of addresses you should replace with specific information are in monospaced italic. The address userid@aol.com is an address at America Online where you replace userid with the actual account name of the recipient. The other replacement word you see in this chapter is domain. Although domain sometimes refers to just com or edu, it also refers to everything after the @ in an Internet address. Hence you can replace userid@domain with pjones@foo.bar.edu.
Except where necessary, this chapter gives only the Internet address of the service and how to send mail to the Internet from the service. To send from one nonInternet service to another, you must determine from this information how to send mail from your service to the Internet and then how to send mail from the Internet to the destination service. Combining the two steps should give you the full address, as the following example shows:
You are on CompuServe and want to send mail to Jeff Brown on GEnie. Looking up the information in the following sections, you find that GEnie's Internet mail format is userid@genie.geis.com. To send mail from CompuServe to Internet, the format is >INTERNET:userid@domain. Thus, you should address the mail to >INTERNET:jbrown@genie.geis.com, assuming that you know Jeff's user ID on GEnie is jbrown.
America Online (AOL) is a major U.S. commercial information service. The standard Internet address for a user at America Online is userid@aol.com. To send Internet mail from AOL, you don't need to use any special formatting; just use the address directly—userid@domain.
AOL lets you use abbreviated domains for AppleLink, CompuServe, or GEnie. Address your mail to userid@applelink, userid@cis, or userid@genie, respectively.
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Example Internet to AOL: |
csmith@aol.com |
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Example AOL to Internet: |
pjones@foo.bar.edu |
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Example AOL to CompuServe: |
11111,222@cis |
AppleLink is Apple Computer, Inc.'s network. Addressing mail to AppleLink is easy; the format is userid@applelink.apple.com. Sending mail to the Internet is a bit trickier—you must address it to userid@site@internet#. The entire sending address must be 35 characters or less, so sending mail to some sites may be impossible.
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Example AppleLink to America Online: |
csmith@aol.com@internet# |
AT&T Mail is a commercial e-mail service provided by AT&T. Sending mail from the Internet to AT&T Mail is easy; the format is userid@attmail.com. You send mail to the Internet in this format: internet!domain!userid.
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Example AT&T Mail to Internet: |
internet!foo.bar.edu!pjones |
Bitnet is an academic network that is becoming less important as more educational sites hook into the Internet. However, the network still exists for now. To send mail from the Internet to Bitnet, address it to userid%bitnetsitename.bitnet@gateway. The gateway must be a host site on both the Internet and Bitnet. A commonly used gateway is mitvma.mit.edu, but your Bitnet site may have a closer gateway you can use—ask the administrators.
Sending mail from Bitnet to the Internet should be fairly easy. To use one of the Bitnet-Internet gateways, systems must be running a mailer capable of certain addressing standards. Also, almost all Bitnet sites are on the Internet as well.
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Example Bitnet to Internet: |
pjones@foo.bar.edu |
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Example Internet to Bitnet: |
csmith%uxavax.bitnet@mitvma.mit.edu |
BIX is the Byte Information eXchange, a commercial service oriented toward technical users. Delphi bought the service, but it still operates separately. Sending mail from the Internet to BIX is easy; the format is userid@bix.com. To send mail to the Internet, choose Internet Services from the main menu.
CompuServe is a large commercial service operated by CompuServe, Inc. The format from the Internet to CompuServe is userid@compuserve.com. The format has one quirk: CompuServe IDs are of the form 77777,777—because commas are not allowed in Internet addresses, you must replace the comma with a period. To get to the Internet from CompuServe use: >INTERNET:userid@domain.
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Example Internet to CompuServe: |
12345.677@compuserve.com |
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Example CompuServe to Internet: |
>INTERNET:pjones@foo.bar.edu |
Connect PIN is the commercial Connect Professional Information Network. To send mail from the Internet to Connect, use userid@connectinc.com. Getting from Connect to the Internet is a bit more difficult. You must send the message to DASN and make the first line of the message "userid@domain"@DASN. Notice the use of the required double quotation marks (") here.
Delphi is a commercial service now devoted to offering Internet access. Delphi is a real Internet site, so standard Internet addressing works. To send mail from the Internet to Delphi, use userid@delphi.com. To send mail from Delphi to the Internet, use userid@domain.
FidoNet is a large international BBS network run over the phone lines. This network is not as fast as the Internet, but access is usually cheaper, and chances are your area has a FidoNet BBS. Because FidoNet is run over phone lines, BBS operators incur charges for any mail transferred, so please don't send large messages to FidoNet sites. In fact, many sites limit messages to 8K or 16K; parts of your larger message will not get through.
To send mail from the Internet to FidoNet, you must know the network address of the specific FidoNet BBS the recipient is on. The address is of the form Z:N/F.P. To send mail to that site, use userid@pP.fF.nN.zZ.fidonet.org. If the address is like 1:2/3, leave out the pP. part. In the userid, replace any spaces or other nonalphanumeric characters with periods (.). To send mail from FidoNet to the Internet, use userid@domain ON gateway. The gateway is a special FidoNet site that acts as an Internet gateway. You can use 1:1/31.
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Example FidoNet to Internet: |
pjones@foo.bar.edu ON 1:1/31 |
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Example Internet to FidoNet: |
chris.smith@p4.f3.n2.z1.fidonet.org |
GEnie is General Electric Information Services, another commercial service. To send mail from the Internet to GEnie, use userid@genie.geis.com. From GEnie to the Internet is userid@domain@INET#.
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Example GEnie to Internet: |
pjones@foo.bar.edu@INET# |
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Example Internet to GEnie: |
csmith@genie.geis.com |
GNS Gold 400 is British Telecom's commercial X.400 system. From the Internet to Gold 400, use userid@org_unit.org.prmd.gold-400.gb. The recipient must give you the userid, org_unit (organization unit), org (organization), and prmd (private mail domain).
To send mail from Gold 400 to the Internet, use /DD.RFC-822=userid@domain/O=uknet/PRMD=uk.ac/ADMD=gold 400/C=GB/. If you have any special characters in the userid, see the "X.400 Addressing" section, later in this chapter, to learn how to encode those characters.
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Example Gold 400 to Internet: |
DD.RFC 822=pjonesfoo.bar.edu/O=uknet/ PRMD=uk.ac/ADMD=gold 400/C=GB |
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Example Internet to Gold 400: |
csmith@foo.bar.baz.gold 400.gb |
IBMMAIL is IBM's commercial mail system. Internet addressing through this system suffers from horrible mainframeitis. Sending a message can give old IBM programmers flashbacks to JCL (Job Control Language). Don't panic.
To send mail from the Internet to IBMMAIL, use userid@ibmmail.com. The userid consists of a country code, company code, and user code, so you must ask for the recipient's address.
To send mail from IBMMAIL to the Internet, send the message to IBMMAIL(INTERNET). Then place the following lines at the top of the message (with no initial spaces):
/INTERNET
/TO userid@domain
/REPORT
/END
MCI Mail is MCI's commercial e-mail service. To mail from the Internet to MCI Mail, you have several options. All users have a name (Pat Jones) and a phone number (555-9999) associated with their account. The phone number is unique, so you can always send mail to number@mcimail.com. If you know that only one P Jones has an MCI Mail account, you can send mail to FLast@mcimail.com, where F is the first initial and Last is the last name. If you know that the system has only one Pat Jones, you can send mail to First_Last@mcimail.com, where First is the first name and Last is the last name. Note the underscore (_) between the names.
To send mail from MCI Mail to the Internet, enter this line at MCI Mail's To prompt: name (EMS). You don't actually need the name for addressing, but you can insert the recipient's real name. MCI Mail then prompts you with EMS:, and you respond with INTERNET. Finally, the service asks for Mbx:, and you respond with userid@domain.
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Example Internet to MCI Mail: |
Pat_Jones@mcimail.com1234567@mcimail.com |
Prodigy is the Prodigy Information Services (Sears and IBM) large commercial service. To send mail from the Internet to Prodigy, use userid@prodigy.com.
At the time of this writing, Prodigy is undergoing many changes; the information presented here may be out of date when you read this. Check with Prodigy for the latest information. Sending mail from Prodigy to the Internet is a little difficult. Support for sending to the Internet isn't integrated into the main Prodigy software, so you have to use some offline Mail Manager software. The software works only on IBM PCs, and you must pay $4.95 to download the Mail Manager. To download when you're online, jump to ABOUT MAIL MANAGER. The Mail Manager leads you through the download procedure.
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Example Internet to Prodigy: |
foob09z@prodigy.com |
If AT&T and MCI have commercial mail services, obviously Sprint isn't going to be left out. SprintMail is Sprint's commercial X.400 mail service. To send mail from the Internet to SprintMail, use /G=first/S=last/O=organization/ADMD=TELE-MAIL/C=US/@sprint.com. The first and last placeholders are the recipient's first and last name, respectively; organization is an organization name you need to get from the recipient.
To send mail from SprintMail to the Internet, use C:USA,A:TELEMAIL,P:INTERNET, "RFC-822":<useriddomain>) DEL. As with other X.400 services, if userid has any special characters, you should refer to the "X.400 Addressing" section, later in this chapter, for information on how to encode these characters.
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Example SprintMail to Internet: |
C:USA,A:TELEMAIL,P:INTERNET, "RFC-822":<pjonesfoo.bar.edu>) DEL |
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Example Internet to SprintMail: |
G=Chris/S=Smith/O=Foo Inc/ADMD=TELEMAIL/C=US/@sprint.com |
WWIVNet is the largest of several networks for BBSes running WWIV software. Traffic from node to node is long distance in several places, and the gateway site uses long distance as well, so please be courteous and don't send or receive anything large (over 8K or so).
To send mail from Internet to WWIVNet, you must get the recipient's node number and user ID number. Use the format userid-node@wwiv.tfsquad.mn.org. To send mail from WWIVNet to Internet, use userid#domain@506.
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Example WWIVNet to Internet: |
pjones#foo.bar.edu@506 |
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Example Internet to WWIVNet: |
12-3456@wwiv.tfsquad.mn.org |
When dealing with computers, the devil is in the details (along with a host of minor demons). The following sections present a few details that can rise up to snap at you in certain situations.
Internet addresses are, for the most part, case insensitive; that is, addresses ignore capitalization. For a given address, userid@domain, any address router should ignore the capitalization of the domain—pjones@Foo.BAR.CoM, pjones@foo.bar.com, and pjones@FOO.BAR.COM all should get to the correct address. The userid also is usually case insensitive, but the individual site or service can change to enforce case sensitivity if they don't have decent programmers.
By UNIX custom, you should give addresses in all lowercase letters when possible. However, if you receive the address of someone on another service or network, be careful to preserve all the capitalization when you send a message. Uppercase and lowercase discrepancies usually are not a problem, but why take chances?
The Internet uses what is known as RFC 822 addressing. Many of the large commercial services that specialize in electronic mail use what is known as X.400 addressing, which looks like /X=value/Y=value/Z=value. You can use this addressing from the Internet (refer to some of the X.400 services in the preceding pages). However, one major problem exists: RFC 822 addressing allows many characters that choke X.400 addressing. X.400 dislikes punctuation characters in its values, including the @ sign, which causes difficulty in sending mail to someone on the Internet.
Whenever an Internet address has a special character, use the following substitutions:
For |
Use |
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@ | |
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% |
(p) |
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! | |
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" |
(q) |
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_ |
(u) |
|
( |
(l) |
|
) |
_ |
For any other special character, like #, substitute (xxx) where xxx is the three-digit decimal ASCII code for the character. For #, the code is (035).
After converting the Internet address uunet.uu.net!bob#test@foo.bar.com into an address for MCI Mail, Gold 400, or any other X.400 service, you have the following address:
<SB2 BOX>
uunet.uu.netbob(035)testfoo.bar.com.
The format is not convenient, but at least it works.
NOTE Useless trivia: replaces ! because in ancient computer times ! often was called bang; addresses containing bangs were known as bangpaths.