OSI/MHS Configuration and Management Manual

Planning Your OSI/MHS Subsystem
OSI/MHS Configuration and Management Manual—424827-003
3-10
O/R Name Addressing Forms
O/R Name Addressing Forms
A major consideration in network planning is O/R name conventions. In X.400
messaging there are many ways to name people and objects. You have to make
decisions related to the hierarchy of naming components, such as:
•
What are the names for the organizations and the organizational units?
•
Will you have a single PRMD or multiple PRMDs?
•
Will users be known by their personal names or by their organizational positions?
Every ROUTE, APPL, DLIST, DLISTMEMBER, and CUGMEMBER object has an O/R
name defined for it. The form of the name determines how OSI/MHS routes messages
to the object. In planning the O/R name attributes that are to define these objects,
there are several guidelines to follow:
•
For best performance, include only enough name elements to make the route
unique. For example, the route-selection criteria should not include a personal
name if the organization name is sufficient to make the route unique. For
mnemonic names, this approach is called hierarchical routing.
•
When possible, use specific routes rather than catch-all routes. A catch-all route
(in which every field is a wildcard) affects performance, security, and costs. It
affects performance because it is found last in the routing database, so a general
route requires the largest number of I/O accesses when searching the database. It
also has security implications because it sends all the messages somewhere; this
fact is also reflected in the costs that get billed to you.
See Appendix E, Routing in OSI/MHS, for a general discussion of how OSI/MHS uses
the O/R name to route messages.
See Appendix B, Configuration Checklists, for checklists on defining ROUTE objects.
Alternate Routes
Alternate routes can be useful for backup, in case the primary route becomes
unavailable. For example, if MTA3 in Figure 3-4
is to send a message to MTA1, it can
send it directly to MTA1. However, if that path is inoperable, the message could also
get to MTA1 by way of MTA2; then MTA2 is its alternate route. MTA3, then, has a main
route (route 1) and an alternate route (route 2) to MTA1.
Note that even though the complete alternate path to MTA1 goes from MTA3 to MTA2,
and then from MTA2 to MTA1, MTA3 “sees” only the part of the path that goes to its
adjacent MTA2.