There
are two primary messaging standards in use for transporting e-mail
between foreign messaging systems. The most popular is SMTP, which most
people are familiar with. The other is X.400, which is less used in the
United States but is prevalent in Europe and Canada. X.400 is a
standards-based system that provides a hierarchical addressing
structure. Whereas an SMTP address is in the format host@domain,
an X.400 address is in the format “c=country;a=administrative
management domain;p=private management
domain;o=organization;s=surname;g=given (first) name”. An SMTP address
of [email protected] in X.400 formatting would look like this:
c=USA;a=;p=LITWAREINC;o=LITWAREINC;s=Meyer;g=Chris
All
versions of Exchange Server support the X.400 standard, and Exchange
Server 5.5 used X.400 for all internal processing and message delivery.
You didn’t even need SMTP addresses with Exchange Server 5.5 unless you
were communicating with SMTP-based messaging systems, such as over the
Internet.
In Exchange
Server 2003, you can configure an X.400 connector to connect any
X.400-compliant messaging system. There are two primary uses for the
X.400 connector. One is to connect X.400 messaging systems that do not
support any other common protocol to Exchange Server 2003. The other is
to connect Exchange Server sites that are connected by unreliable
bandwidth. Typically, you would use a Site Connector to connect
Exchange Server 2003 routing groups, but if the bandwidth is
unreliable, you can use the messaging-based X.400 connector, which
doesn’t rely on a consistent or permanent link for the connection.
Configuring
an X.400 connector is done through Exchange System Manager. There is
nothing additional to install, unlike with the Connector for Lotus
Notes or the Connector for Novell GroupWise. Before you can configure
an X.400 connector, you must first create an X.400 transport stack in
the Protocols container on the desired server. This provides the
transport that the X.400 connector will use. There are three different
types of X.400 transports available in Exchange Server 2003:
TCP/IP X.400 Service Transport Stack Provides
an interface for connecting X.400 messaging systems over the standard
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) protocol.
X.25 X.400 Service Transport Stack Provides an interface for using X.25-compliant devices to connect X.400 systems.
RAS
Provides an interface for using Remote Access Service (RAS) over a
dial-up connection. This option will appear only if RAS is installed on
the server.
After
you configure the type of transport stack you want the X.400 connector
to use, you can then configure the X.400 connector to use the transport
stack. This is also done through Exchange System Manager, by
right-clicking the Connectors container, pointing to New, and clicking
the type of X.400 connector to create. To configure the X.400
connector, you use a series of property tabs, similar to configuring
other connectors. If you are connecting to a non-Exchange Server X.400
system, you will need to obtain the necessary information about the
destination end of the connector, and the administrator of the other
system will need your information. You have to configure both ends of
the connector for synchronization to work, so configuring an X.400
connector is usually a cooperative effort between mail system
administrators.