NET-TEL offer Route500 directory system agents
(DSAs) and directory user agents (DUAs for Windows
and Macintosh). These products complement
Route400 client and
server
products, providing access to X.500 based directories for addressing
and other information, but can also be used independently. Route500
products conform to the international X.500 standards, and provide
additional functionality where standards are emerging, and thus
incomplete, for example in the area of access control.
X.500 products are still new. NET-TEL's
active participation in international standards activities and
X.500 pilot trials provides the company and its customers with
valuable early experience that is reflected in our products.
Standard functions in directory system agents
The Route500 directory system agent,
or DSA, stores, queries and retrieves information
from an integrated directory database. Each DSA controls a directory
database containing information which is locally administered.
The data held by the DSA can be completely general in nature,
but will usually include information about an organisation's members
such as postal and e-mail addresses, telephone numbers etc.
The DSA also knows how to connect to and communicate with other
DSAs. Information not found on the local database can be retrieved
from another DSA. This concept allows global addressing and thereby
overcomes the administrative and support problems associated with
maintaining multiple copies of directory information within an
organisation and the consequent need to synchronise these at regular
intervals.
Until X.500 addressing is implemented,
an organisation must create a master directory somewhere, keep
this updated with all changes to all the local e-mail directories
held within that organisation, and distribute a consolidated file
containing these changes to each local directory at regular intervals.
If carried out properly, a user querying his local directory should
always have access to the most current address list covering the
whole organisation.
Route500 addressing, on the other hand,
allows queries to be routed to more than one DSA. The "home"
DSA queried by a Route500
DUA obtains
the information needed, when not stored on that DSA, by relaying
the corresponding query to either a particular DSA having a high
probability of having the information requested, or to all other
DSAs in broadcast mode. The inter-DSA communication uses the X.500
directory service protocol (DSP).
Current Route500 DSA implementations
exist for several versions of UNIX.
Standard functions in directory user agents
The Route500
directory user agent,
or DUA, is normally installed together with a Route400
message client
and operates seamlessly with this. This provides directory searching
and browsing and is based on an advanced, user-friendly concept.
Using standard facilities, users can simply transfer e-mail
addressing information from the Route500 or other X.500 server
directory to their local address book or, for immediate use, to
the recipient address field of outgoing messages. This and other
information held in the directories, which can be quite comprehensive,
may be transferred into the body part of messages and other general-purpose
office documents.
Route500 DUAs are currently available
in implementations for PCs and workstations running
Windows
or
Macintosh and can access
Route500 DSAs
and other vendors' DSAs using the standard X.500 directory access
protocol (DAP) over X.25, TCP/IP and asynchronous connections.
Route500 DUA software is integrated
with Route400 user agents at several levels and provides a graphical
interface with user-friendly naming support. Directory information
shown includes not just the usual text containing e-mail
and location addresses, phone numbers and fax number, but can
also contain an image of the selected person.