Re: Services Operations WG

[Einar Stefferud <]

I have to agree with Daniel -- The "IP Dialtone Service Providers" are
not likely to find reasons to focus on upper layer Applications
Issues, like EMail Infrasrtruture, which is indeed another network,
but operating at Layer 7 and thus "out of sight" in general.

A factor in all this is that at the higher layers, most of the issues
are dealt with at what the service providers see as customer site end
points, or on the edges of their clouds.

In the US, Service Providers do offer EMail connections, but they do
so in a sort of retail mode, without any significant inter-provider
coordination.  One factor here is that SMTP infrastructure is not
configured with Service Provider MTAs.  Most likely they operate a
UUCP relay, or a POP server, or equivalent.

Except for the X.400 ADMD operators, I do not know any IP Service
Providers in the US that run an X.400 MTA in the WEP Mode, though the
US ADMD Service Providers who do operate X.400 MTAs seem to have been
expecting that the Internet would configure itself to match the ADMD
structure, somehow putting up an INTERNET X.400 MTA to which they
could hand off all their X.400 mail, as in a WEP configuration.

I do not see this happening in the US Internet.  There is no
reasonable way to fund it, and the SMTP experience indicates that it
is not required.  This is a major factor in the difficulties of
eploying X.400 in c=-US.  X.400 is designed to require PTT style
operations.

Best...\Stef

From your message Mon, 10 Jan 1994 10:08:42 +0100:
}
}RIPE is a forum for network service providers.  There have been attempts
}to also discuss information services etc.  in RIPE but they have
}produced less concrete results than the network service related efforts.
}From such fora (including the IEPG in my opinion) you can only expect
}that they deal with the problems relevant to their constituency.  Only a
}few application services are relevant to network service providers; for
}the others you need another forum woth other players involved. 
}It is just like publishers and the printing industry.  
}They are related but different. 
}I do not think that mixing the two will work very well. 
}
}Daniel