X.400 help

[Steven Chen_1]

It may not be the proper place to put up this question, but hopefully some exports can offer some help.

1) what is X.400
2) how to implement it
3) is it secure, or does it need encrypion

Thanks,

Steven

[John Palmer]

Steven,

All I know is that it's the OSI specification for messaging (email).

Have a look at:-
http://www.alvestrand.no/domen/x400/faq-mhsnews.html#1

[Tom Crawford]

Hi Steve,

In a past life I've used X.400 as a message handling protocol along with X.500 which provided directory services. These protocols are a bit more time intensive to implement than the traditional name@host.domain way because entries are made about the users country, location, organization and name as well as some other options. When I supported it we used Outlook/Exchange and Notes as the front end and their corresponding servers for mail at the local level. We also used HP-UX boxes with message handling and directory service software as the backbone of the whole system. For security we used PCMCIA (Fortezza) cards to encrypt at the client side. The main advantage to using X.400 is that a message can be tracked thru logging on each box it goes thru whether it goes thru primary or alternate (message) routes. The disadvantage is the administrative time it takes to make directory entries for each person in your organization. Hope this helps.