Problems with Janet and Bitnet

[Ben Cranston]

In article <1942 at brl-smoke.ARPA> SLG6M%USU.BITNET at WISCVM.arpa writes:

> Help!  I have been trying without success for the past two weeks
> to send a mail message to Nigel Holder at Marconi Research.  I
> am connected to Bitnet, which allegedly has the capability to
> send mail to JANET via a gateway at a Bitnet node called UKACRL
> in London.  It gets to London via Bitnet OK, but then I keep getting
> "YF21 at UK.CO.GEC-MRC.U Is an invalid assress. No delivery made."
> mailed back to me?  Any ideas a) what's going wrong here, and b)
> how do I send a message to Nigel?

a: There's some kind of bovine feces about passwords using that gateway,
   see below for more information.

b: I would suggest you use the other address:

   yf21%u.gec-mrc.co.uk at ucl-cs

   that Nigel advertises in his .signature.  Note that the British net uses
   backwards domaining, and that ucl-cs reverses it for you while ukacrl
   does not.   

c: Bovine Feces:  From "EDUCOM NETWORKING" Volume 2 Number 1 1986 page 6:

EARNET/JANET GATEWAY DEVELOPMENT

A gateway between the European Academic Research Network (EARN) and the 
Joint Academic Network for academic and research institutes in the United
Kingdom (JANET) is under development at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
in England.

Currently EARN, BITNET's European counterpart, numbers 269 nodes.  With the
addition of JANET, networking capabilities expand by approximately 200
computers.  When fully operational, the gateway will allow transfer of files
and mail between BITNET/EARN/NetNorth and JANET sites.  NetNorth, the 81-node
Canadian academic and research network, has direct links to BITNET and EARN.

The file transfer facilities of the gateway are available now.  To transfer
a file to a JANET node, the first two lines of the file must be:

//* *FILE SITE=site name,USER=user id,PSWD=password,DEV=file
//* *FILE FILE=file name,KEEP=NO

The password is normally the one associated with the userid.  However,
password information may not be required, particularly on IBM VM/CMS
systems.  The file should be send to id JANET at EARN node UKACRL.

The mail gateway to JANET is under development and should be available
by late March.  When this work is complete, BITNET/EARN/NetNorth nodes
with Columbia mailers can send mail to JANET nodes with the following
address:

   userid at site.AC.UK

For example, mail to Fred on JANET node RL.GB would be send with the address:

   Fred at GB.RL.AC.UK

Note that node names must be reversed for transmission into JANET.  That is,
the node at which Fred receives his mail would be presented on a JANET node 
list as UK.AC.RL.GB.  BITNET/EARN/NetNorth nodes without the Columbia mailer
must send files to communicate with JANET nodes.

JANET uses the "Coloured Books" protocols developed in the U.K., and
BITNET/EARN/NetNorth use IBM's NJE/NJI protocols.  Due to lack of
standardization in both environments, not all facilities will be available
to all nodes.  For mail transfer, the BITNET/EARN/NetNorth node must provide
the Columbia mailer or compatable system, and the JANET node must offer
"Grey Book" mail.  Binary file transfer will only be supported between IBM
nodes on either network.  Interactive messaging will not be supported 
through the gateway.

Not all JANET sites will be known to the gateway at Rutherford.  A list of
available nodes will be posted on NICSERVE when the gateway is operational.
-CKW

[OK zben here again] Whew.  The bovine feces concern the password stuff.
There is probably a password built into the binary for the Columbia mailer,
which is an object-only distribution.  The Columbia mailer is written in
IBM assembler code, so you can see how much fun it is trying to support a
non-IBM-370 machine on BitNet, and why non-IBM-370 machines are sometimes
made to feel second-class citizens.  Oh well.

If you've read this far, you might wonder how to get from BITNET to the
ARPA gateway.  I don't know for sure, because I don't know if WISCVM does
the 'rightmost percent sign' stuff for multiple gateways.  One might 
write an address like:

      yf21%u.gec-mrc.co.uk%ucl-cs.arpa at wiscvm
          ^               ^
and one would want wiscvm to interpret the RIGHTMOST percent sign of the
two.  I think this is the right thing to do, and all MY mail software does
this.  If you support a mailer that does percent sign, consider implementing
this subtle point.

Also note that there was a five-part SENDMAIL patch system posted to 
mod.sources some time ago.  I printed it off but quite frankly do not know
enough to pick out which gateway it finally ended up using out of the mass
of stuff posted.  The ID coordinates were: 1636, 1638, 1639, 1642, and 1643
at "panda.UUCP".  They were submitted by:

    Jim Crammond <seismo!mcvax!cs.hw.ac.uk!jim>

Some people call me a packrat.
-- 
                    umd5.UUCP    <= {seismo!umcp-cs,ihnp4!rlgvax}!cvl!umd5!zben
Ben Cranston zben @ umd2.UMD.EDU    Kingdom of Merryland Sperrows 1100/92
                    umd2.BITNET     "via HASP with RSCS"