BITNET Network Information Center       GATEWAY STANDARD        11/27/91
Suite 600, 1112 16th St., NW, Washington, DC 20036, USA, +1 202-872-4200
 
 
 
                 Requirements for INTERBIT Gateways
 
 
     Mail loops and other serious problems on the Internet have been
caused by inappropriate conversion of addresses by some gateways between
BITNET and the Internet,  "unfriendly" handling of errors by many BITNET
nodes, and the inability of many BITNET nodes to properly reply to
Internet mail because they lack mailers able to properly handle Internet
mail headers and Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) addresses.  In order
to address these problems, the following requirements shall become an
immediate goal for implementation, and shall be required of all INTERBIT
gateways as soon as the IBM TCP/IP software has been modified so that
sites using that software as the basis for their gateways can meet the
requirements (but not before January 1, 1992).  Unofficial gateways are
also strongly encouraged to comply with these requirements.
 
   Every INTERBIT gateway between BITNET and the Internet operated by a
      CREN member or affiliate shall satisfy the following requirements,
      which other gateways are also strongly encouraged to meet:
   1.  The gateway shall not pass mail to or from BITNET nodes that do
      not use a BSMTP-compliant mailer.  Mail from the Internet
      addressed to a BITNET node without such a mailer shall be returned
      with an error message; any file from a BITNET node without a
      compliant mailer, and any file without proper Internet mail
      headers, even if sent from a node with a compliant mailer, shall
      be returned with error message.
    For reference, the following are known to be BSMTP compliant:  for
      VM/CMS systems, the combination of VM Network Mailer, Release 2,
      and Rice Mail; for MVS systems, UCLA/Mail; for VAX/VMS systems,
      Jnet plus PMDF; for Unix, UREP.
   2.  The conversion of addresses in the mail headers shall:
   *   not modify apparent Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) addresses
      in gatewaying mail from BITNET to the Internet or from the
      Internet to BITNET;
   *   convert BITNET addresses of the form user@FOO or user @FOO.BITNET
      into Internet addresses of the form
      user%FOO.BITNET@gateway.domain, when sending mail from BITNET onto
      the Internet;
   *   convert Internet addresses of the form
      user%FOO.BITNET@gateway.domain into BITNET addresses of the form
      user@FOO.BITNET, when sending mail from the Internet onto
      BITNET;
   *   not convert or pass into the Internet any mail with BITNET
      addresses containing exclamation marks in the "user" field, as
      these are ill-defined upon conversion.