Design and evaluation of a multiprotocol electronic mail switching system

This research attempted to determine the criteria necessary for the construction of effective internetwork electronic mail gateways and multiprotocol message transfer agents. The research was conducted by constructing a multiprotocol MTA and several mail gateways with different architectures and observing their use over a period of several years. It was concluded that while mail gateways can be an effective means of communicating between dissimilar electronic mail systems, this is very difficult to acheive in practice. Several techniques were identified which aid in the construction of effective mail gateways.