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- Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
- Path: sparky!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!spool.mu.edu!yale.edu!yale!actcnews!sun1x!dowd
- From: dowd@sun1x.actc.res.utc.com (Kevin Dowd)
- Subject: We're doin' it too... MIME, etc
- Message-ID: <1992Dec29.053943.1944@sun1x.actc.res.utc.com>
- Organization: United Technologies Research Center
- Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 05:39:43 GMT
- Lines: 42
-
- Hi folks. I'm glad to see that other people are looking into an all
- SMTP/MIME-based solution to inter-platform (PC, MAC, UNIX, other)
- enterprise-wide mail. We've constructed a gateway'd cc:mail, microsoft
- mail, unix mail, vms mail (and even profs) system with Alisa mail
- PMDF and All-in-1 as the mail gateways. Even if it worked, it would
- be broken. If you've tried to construct a similar system, you'll know
- what I mean.
-
- For my money, any gateway'd system is defective at inception. Even if
- mail flows smoothly through the gateways, you can't share other
- resources, such as displays or file systems. Imagine, on the other
- hand, if every machine (PC, MAC, UNIX, other) shared some common set
- of protocols for network communications, mail, displays; they could
- keep to their proprietary protocols when communicating between similar
- machines, but when it came time to do something "enterprise-wide,"
- wouldn't it be good if they all spoke the same language? I think so.
-
- Theoretically, you could pick from a number of sets of protocols.
- At UTRC, we're staging a demonstration with:
-
- - Internet Protocols and
- - SMTP / MIME
- - X Windows
- - NFS (to an extent)
- - nntp news clients (of course)
- - DNS (for hosts)
- ..and we're planning to try integrating ISODE X.500 into one or
- two applications to see how it goes (if anyone can get all the
- way through the documentation... zzzzz)
-
- Who else has tried gluing their enterprise together this way, and how
- did it go? My guess is that a number of people would like to know.
- (We're all being dragged off into the woods by proprietary enterprise
- solutions.) Post your 2 cents or send me some return mail, and I'll
- summarize the results for the group.
-
- -Kevin
- --
- ----|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Kevin Dowd, consultant at United Technologies Research Center
- Say whatever you want about me. Just spell my name right.
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-