Addressing
An X.400 address is technically referred to as an Originator/Recipient (OR) address. It has two purposes:
Mailbox identification - either the originator or recipient. Global domain identification - where a given mailbox is located.
- 1984 defined an OR address as an X.400 address that identified where the user is located.
- 1988 defines it as a combination of a directory name (distinguished name) and an X.400 address.
An X.400 address consists of several elements, including:
- C (Country name)
- ADMD (Administration Management Domain), usually a public mail service provider
- PRMD (Private Management Domain)
- O (Organization name)
- OU (Organizational Unit Names)
- G (Given name)
- I (Initials)
- S (Surname)
The standards themselves originally did not specify how these email addresses should be written (for instance on a business card); RFC 1685 specified one encoding, based on a 1993 draft of ITU-T Recommendation F.401 which looked like:
- "G=Harald;S=Alvestrand;O=Uninett;P=Uninett;A=;C=no"
1984 had two forms for address formats:
- Form 1: (with 3x variants) - primarily uses ADMD and a subset of other attributes
- Form 2: (with no variants) - identifies users by means of telematic terminal (hardware) addresses.
In the 1988 X.400 Recommendations, four forms of addressing were delineated. The 1984 Form 1, Variant 1 format was renamed as the mnemonic O/R address and the 1984 Form 1, Variant 3 and Form 2 format were combined and renamed the terminal O/R address. New forms introduced were the numeric O/R form (a variation of Form 1, Variant 2) and the postal O/R address.
The unwieldiness of this addressing format is believed by many to be one factor in the lack of success of X.400.
Read more about this topic: X.400
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