Intended Audience

Industry Management staff, technical staff, messaging system architects and those wishing to understand Internet e-mail services can all benefit from this paper. The structure of this paper is intended to allow for all of these audiences.

It is assumed that the reader has some knowledge of the practical aspects of deploying mail user agents (UAs) and gateways. Where necessary, the paper provides technical information (although generally not in great detail) and therefore should prove valuable to technical operator staff as well as to the managers responsible for realizing transfer of application data.

Users representing public mail carriers, private companies, government entities, academic institutions, and those in the standards communities will find the issues discussed in this paper of immediate importance to them.