[ih] .UK vs .GB

[Dr Eberhard W Lisse]

I personally found that X.400 addressing was better than a UUCP bang
path, but of course in the words of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.400

   "As with most ISO standards dealing with application-level
   networking, X.400 failed to compete successfully with SMTP, the
   Internet-based equivalent in North America."

Remember, until the early 90's even German Universities were not
connected to the ARPANET.

At the Technical University in Aachen we used BITNET/EARN (on VAXen and
CDCs, at the nearby Nuclear Research Facility in Jülich the used IBMs,
in Dortmund on BSD). CSNET was used a little in Southwest Germany.
Intercommunication was reliable, but difficult.

So something needed to be done.

I recall the the guys from the Computer Center telling me before I
graduated from Medical School in 1987 that X.400 and OSI would be all
the rage, Real Soon Now, and when I saw them again on leave from Namibia
in 1992 (where we had been using UUCP/uuPC for a year or two) they were
deeply engaged with TCP/IP.

greetings, el

On 2018-04-15 15:01 , John Day wrote:
> Yes, it was a committee as was SMTP. But before you get to
> self-satisfied with how smart we all were and they weren’t. It should
> be pointed out that much of the design of both X.400 and X.500 was
> driven by the former DARPA participants in the National Software Works
> project from SRI. I had many an argument with them over various
> aspects of it.
> 
> The idea of knowing what type the components of an identifier are is
> not inherently a bad idea. It certainly gives you more information for
> the database design that goes with it.
> 
> John
[...]
-- 
Dr. Eberhard W. Lisse          / Obstetrician & Gynaecologist (Saar)
el at lisse.NA            / *     |   Telephone: +264 81 124 6733 (cell)
PO Box 8421                  /
Bachbrecht, Namibia     ;____/