RFC 498

ON MAIL SERVICE TO CCN ✨

• RFC 498 🎀, from the Network Working Group 🌸
• Author: Robert T. Braden, UCLA/CCN 💅
• NIC #15715 🦋
• Date: April 17, 1973 📅
• Category, obsoletes, updates: the original doesn't list any of these, so I'm not making them up 🙈

Okay so most of the recent mail protocol docs have been talking about the fancy stuff you'd want at "post-office" hosts, the ones doing store-and-forward. CCN is NOT doing post-office stuff 🙅‍♀️ We only expect mail for CCN staff. Our biggest worry is getting messages reliably to our admin and user support people who don't usually sit at online terminals, so we print everything out and a courier/secretary hands it around 📬

Let me say a friendly word for SNDMSG 💖 This Tenex command uses the FTP MAIL command to deliver messages. It's super simple and extremely useful, probably because it's so simple ✨ And here's the lowkey secret of the Network: SNDMSG can send messages to ANY host that supports the MAIL command, without logging in to FTP first 🤫 So to message anyone at CCN, the recommended procedure is SNDMSG to name@CCN. That connects to CCN's FTP and sends a MAIL name command followed by the message. We accept any name now and print an instant upper-case copy that gets distributed to the recipient's office. So if you SNDMSG to BRADEN@CCN, it ends up on my desk, usually within a few hours 🫶 Other useful SNDMSG destinations 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 too simple 💀 After giving you a message, it should ask whether you want to 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 so CCN can also serve as a mail delivery station for NMC 🌟 This extension is meant to be a trivial subset of the full-blown mail protocol that Jim White et al. are currently developing. It's a simple way to let CCN's high-speed printers be used for receiving and spreading Network documentation as well as messages 🖨️ It's based on extensions to the pathname/user name fields in the MLFL/MAIL commands, respectively. The proposed syntax is below, bestie:

                           __                   __
                          |                       |
                          | ;D[DOCUMENT]          |
                          | ;M[MESSAGE]           |
               <userid>   | ;C[COPIES]= <integer> |
                          | ;BIN= <integer>       |
                          |__                   __|

Here's what each piece means 🦋

1. <userid> will normally be a valid TSO userid, and it's used to figure out a charge number so the printing gets accounted for. If <userid> is _not_ recognized, the rest of the parameters get ignored, but the mail still gets accepted. The result is one copy printed immediately in upper case and sent to Bin 9906, charged 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) also gets printed immediately in upper case and distributed. 📄✨
4. COPIES makes multiple copies. [This facility will not be available immediately]. 🙈
5. BIN specifies the CCN bin that receives the output. The default is 9906 (ARPA mail bin). 🍓

Every incoming message gets time-and-date-stamped ⏰ The stamp appears on the first page of the message (on a separate page for upper/lowercase), in the 256 acknowledgment message from FTP, and in our system log file. This is super helpful for users keeping tabs on their documents, and it lets us track down missing messages, so it's iconic 🔥 The semicolon and equal sign delimiters of this syntax are acceptable in the "user" parameter to SNDMSG.

This extended MAIL syntax will be implemented by June 1. 🎉

RTB/gjm 🫶

       [ This RFC was put into machine readable form for entry ]
       [ into the online RFC archives by Alex McKenzie with    ]
       [ support from GTE, formerly BBN Corp.             9/99 ]