E-Mail Configuration: Hiding Individual Host Names

HP3000 E-Mail Configuration: Hiding Individual Host Names

In many environments it is desirable to use a uniform format for e-mail addresses. This makes addresses easier to remember, allows you to move mailboxes internally among different hosts without changing a user's mailbox address, and also makes it easier for someone outside your organization to figure out what a person's e-mail address is if they forgot it or only know the person's real name.

As an example, say HP wanted all it's employees e-mail addresses to be "firstname-lastname@hp.com". Normally, an e-mail address contains the full name of the host the mailbox is resident on, for instance "firstname-lastname@machine196.hp.com". The ability to "hide" the full name of the mail host is called "name hiding" or "site hiding".

In NetMail/3000 or DeskLink based e-mail systems, site hiding is easily selected via the global configuration screen in the NetMaint program (just enter the "hide host name" (hp.com in the example above) in the field on the screen. In practice however, there are other considerations, especially if you are dealing with several other mail systems.

These considerations include:

First, there must be one mail system designated as the "hub"; this is the system that first accepts all incoming mail messages and then routes them on to the final destination.
A Mail Hub must:
- Know about all recipients in the entire organization. This requires a master table or alias file with mailbox information for local users as well as forwarding information for users on other mail servers.
- If possible, automatic directory synchronization with the HUB will make this job much easier; if not available, then someone's going to have to manually keep up with all the changes in the organization.
- The hub must be capable of reaching all the other e-mail servers in the organization (though it doesn't have to be a direct link; mail can be relayed through other gateways or relays to get to its final destination).
All mail systems must be configured to recognize the pseudo hostname (the hide hostname) as an alias for their own hostname.
If any of the mail systems aren't synchronized (so they know the final destinations of all other mail users in the organization) then they need to be configured to pass messages to the hub (at least for recipients they don't know about).
Your nameserver (DNS) maintainer should set up MX (mail redirect) records for your "domain" so that they point to your mail hub.

NetMail/3000 HP3000 Email Server
Native HP3000 Email Server

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