RFC498 - On mail service to CCN

NETWORK WORKING GROUP                                   ROBERT T. BRADENRFC#498                                                UCLA/CCNNIC #15715                                              APRIL 17, 1973                         ON MAIL SERVICE TO CCN    Most of the recent documents on mail protocols have discussed thefacilities desired at "post-Office" hosts, i.e. those which providestore-and-forward services. CCN has no plans to provide post-officeservices; we eXPect to receive mail only for the staff of CCN.  Ourgreatest concern is to get messages reliably to and from ouradministrative and user support people who don't habitually use on-lineterminals, so we are printing out all mail and distributing it bycourier/secretary.    Let me say a friendly Word for SNDMSG.  This Tenex command, whichuses the FTP MAIL command to deliver messages, is very simple butextremely useful--probably because it is so simple.  Furthermore, it isone of the well-kept secrets of the Network that SNDMSG can be used tosend messages to any host which supports the MAIL command (withoutrequiring logon to FTP).  Thus, to send a message to anyone at CCN, therecommended procedure is to do SNDMSG to "name@CCN".  This connects toCCN's FTP and sends a "MAIL name" command followed by the message.  Wenow accept any "name" and print an immediate upper-case copy which isdistributed to the recipient's office.  So, if you SNDMSG to"BRADEN@CCN", your message will end up on my desk, usually within a fewhours.  Other useful SNDMSG destination at CCN are:           WBK@CCN or KEHL@CCN      (the Director)           RIB@CCN or BELL@CCN      (Supervisor Of User Relations)           BBN@CCN or NOBLE@CCN     (Barbara Noble, User Consultant)This fine service is brought to you by your friendly neighborhood Tenex.    On the other hand, the Tenex READMAIL command is a little toosimple.  After giving you a message, it should ask you whether you wantto delete, keep, forward, and/or repeat the message.    Dave Crocker of NMC has suggested an extension to the MAIL and MLFL(Mail File) commands in CCN's FTP to allow CCN to serve as a maildelivery station for NMC as well as CCN.  This extension is intended tobe a trivial subset of the full-blown mail protocol which is currentlybeing developed by Jim White et al.  It is a simple means to allow CCN's
                         high-speed printers to be used conveniently for receiving anddisseminating Network documentation as well as messages.  It is basedupon extensions of the pathname/user name fields in the MLFL/MAILcommands, respectively.  The proposed syntax is as follows:                           __                   __                                                                            ;D[DOCUMENT]                                     ;M[MESSAGE]                          <userid>    ;C[COPIES]= <integer>                            ;BIN= <integer>                                 __                   __The semantics would be:    (1) <userid>  will normally be a valid TSO userid; this will be used                  to determine a charge number to account for the                  printing. If <userid> is _not_ recognized, the rest of                  the parameters will be ignored, but the mail will                  still be accepted. The result will be to print one                  copy immediately in upper case and send it to Bin                  9906, charging it to an overhead account.    (2) MESSAGE   means print a copy immediately using the normal                  upper-case-only train. This is the default.    (3) DOCUMENT  means enqueue the text for overnight printing with an                  upper/lower case print train.  A message indicating                  receipt (and perhaps the first block) will also be                  printed immediately in upper case and distributed.    (4) COPIES    makes multiple copies. [This facility will not be                  available immediately].    (5) BIN       specifies CCN bin to receive output. Default will be                  9906 (ARPA mail bin).    Each incoming message will be time-and-date-stamped.  The time/datewill appear on the first page of the message (on a separate page in thecase of upper/lowercase), in the 256 acknowledgment message from FTP,and on our system log file.  This time/date stamp may be useful forusers to keep tabs on their documents, and to allow us to track downmissing messages. The semicolon and equal sign delimiters of this syntaxare acceptable in the "user" parameter to SNDMSG.    This extended MAIL syntax will be implemented by June 1.RTB/gjm       [ This RFCwas put into machine readable form for entry ]       [ into the online RFCarchives by Alex McKenzie with    ]       [ support from GTE, formerly BBN Corp.             9/99 ]