International E-mail Accessibility
Compiled by Olivier M.J. Crepin-Leblond
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This document is © Copyright 1994-2003 by
Olivier Crepin-Leblond.
This page has been translated into Spanish
language by Maria Ramos from Webhostinghub.com/support.
Parts of this document may be reproduced in a commercial publication
ONLY if prior permission has been granted by the copyright holder.
It may however be freely redistributed in its entirety provided that
this copyright notice, its headers "Archive-name", "Last-modified",
and "Release" are not removed.
NOTES:
I. Description of codes:
- FI stands for FULL INTERNET access. This includes 'telnet', 'ftp',
and internet E-mail.
- B stands for BITNET access although the address may be in internet
DNS (Domain Name System) format.
- * (Asterisk) means that the country is reachable by E-mail. If this is
not preceded by FI or B, it means that the connection may be a UUCP
connection. An asterisk is included after FI or B for consistency.
- C stands for the "courtesy" top level domain. There is actually no
physical access as such in the country referenced by this top level
domain, but E-mail and/or Web addresses can be obtained under it;
in some cases, this is for an official Web server for that country,
which is facility-managed elsewhere. In other cases, it is a
courtesy domain provided for commercial reasons which may, or may
not be seen as a legitimate use of that top level domain.
- PFI stands for a provisional full internet connection.(+)
- P stands for provisional connection. (+)
(+) This is used when one or more of the following is true:
- address not verified or lack of address
- UUCP dialup not active
- net connection possible but not officially announced
- premature official announcement of connection
- F stands for a country that is connected to Internet only via means
of the FIDOnet network. It is assumed that the FIDO connection in this
case is stable and reliable.
II. Networks which are not included:
Networks such as MILNET (U.S. Military's unclassified portion of the
DDN - Data Defense Network) have computers all around the world. It is
generally possible to assume that wherever there is a U.S. military base,
there will be a node reachable through gateways.
Worldwide Private company networks (banks, computer companies etc. that
have their own worldwide corporate intra-net).
Some networks based on X.400 E-mail, which offer high-cost networking
access. While those types of network are fading fast due to their
high cost compared to the Internet, some regions of the world are
still reacheable only via such networks. The service is VERY COSTLY,
usually takes place via UUCP or X.400 connections. X.400 E-mail is
usually charged to someone and if the telecommunication carrier
cannot find someone to pay for the message transfer, it will reject
it. Although you may be able to receive E-mail from a user on those
networks, you may not be able to reply to it.
III. Updates:
The situation changes from day to day.
The growth in international
networking is such that the information contained in this document
may be out of date by the time it reaches you.
If you have any update (i.e. knowledge that a new country is connected),
please send a message to ocl@gih.com , including an example address
from the country reached so that it can be verified.
Furthermore, if you are a connection provider or could provide a
low cost connection in a country, and are not listed as a provider in
that country (see "FURTHER INFORMATION" section), please notify either
Randy Bush (randy@nsrc.org) ,
Steven Huter (sghuter@nsrc.org)
or me.
NOTE: This doesn't include providers for North America.
If you are a North American provider, then please DON'T contact us - there
are already thousands of providers out there.
If you know of interesting networking information servers for a
particular country, please send its Web reference to me (ocl@gih.com).
Many thanks to all who have sent updates in the past.
IV. .US sites
While there are several hundreds of BITNET nodes in USA, none have
a name in the format `.US'. That is why the .us domain is only FI and *.
V. .edu, .com, etc.
The domains in this section are special in that some of them are
used in more than one country. The domains which have full internet
access are marked accordingly.
Furthermore, .com, .net and .org and so forth are now served by more
than one official registrar around the world. On 21 April 1999, ICANN
announced the list of competitive domain name registrars. More
information can be found on:
http://www.icann.org/srsannounce.html
VI. UK and GB domains
UK stands for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern
Ireland. GB actually stands for Great Britain. GB is therefore a
subset of UK. In reality, the GB top level domain has been used mainly
for X.400 addressing of sites, while the UK top level domain is more
commonly used. While in the early nineties, there was an emphasis towards
X.400, and hence towards registration under the GB top level domain,
this policy does not stand anymore, and most sites in the UK are
now registered under the UK top level domain.
VII. Further information column
While there was a time when it was possible to display all
further information about a country's connectivity on this table,
it is now impossible to do so.
In general, this column may contain a link to further information.
VIII. Where to find further information
A number of sites run on-line information databases, mail-servers,
and web information systems where further information can be found.
InterNIC - whois.internic.net
Part of this site, the InterNIC database services, contains the
Internet "white pages". The "whois" section of the "white pages"
has registration records for top level domains. "whois" can be
accessed by connecting interactively (telnet rs.internic.net),
or via the Web (http://www.internic.net/) or using the "whois"
command available on some computer systems (whois -h rs.internic.net).
Registration records for a domain are sometimes useful since they
provide Administrative and Technical Contacts for this domain
and those may hence be able to provide further information.
Whois can also be accessible by E-mailing mailserv@internic.net
and subject: whois [name/domain]
RIPE NCC - www.ripe.net
This is a Web system run by ripe.net, the co-ordinator for the
Central European Registry. It contains a lot of information regarding
European IP, etc. It may be accessed as "www.ripe.net".
This is where the
European Host count is found.
It also has a "whois" database of domain contacts.
- whois.apnic.net
The Asia Pacific Network Information Center, the co-ordinator
for Internet sites in Asia and the Pacific area.
The APNIC WHOIS Server is on: http://www.apnic.net/apnic-bin/whois.pl
-
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority - IANA
This site has an alphabetical list of Top Level Domains and their
contact details. It is very useful for getting in touch with registration
services for each country.
-
Internet Software Consortium/Network Wizards Internet Domain survey
Every 6 months, a complete Internet Domain survey of the Internet is attempted, with host counts in all countries reacheable by the Net.
For all information: http://www.isc.org/ds
- GNET: an Archive and Electronic Journal
This is co-ordinated by Larry Press (lpress@isi.edu)
Archived documents are available on the Web at:
http://som.csudh.edu/cis/lpress/devnat/
The collection of documents available at this site comes from various sources
and includes information published in the Internet Society (ISOC) "On The Internet"
magazine.
BITNIC Bitnet Network Information Center
Bitnet LISTSERVs contain files which list all BITNET sites around
the world. For a listing of all BITNET sites, in country code order,
send a message to LISTSERV@Bitnic.educom.edu (or LISTSERV@BITNIC for
BITNET folks), no subject, and the command:
GET NODES INFO3
in the body of the message.
A very long file of information on all international BITNET sites
can be ftp'ed from Bitnic.educom.edu and is called BITEARN.NODES .
It is more than 2Mb long.
- AfricaNET
NOTE: CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE
This site, maintained by Koma Gandy, contains information about Connectivity
in Africa. It also has pointers to further information about African
connectivity.
-
NAIC (NASA) Internet Survey of Providers
This database contains contact details of providers throughout the world.
It also provides an insight into the NASA's global satellite links.
Commercial Service Providers in Central America
This database is maintained by Grete Pasch, and contains
information about providers in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras,
and Nicaragua.
- Internet access providers around the world
This database is maintained by Benoit Lips and co-workers. It contains
a comprehensive list of access providers in all continents.
- Global Web Explorer
Bob Duggan and Steven Gibbs's links to every country throughout the World
includes links to the CIA world Fact Book. It is a great "pocket-guide"
to International Web-surfing.
NSRC - www.nsrc.org
This database, maintained by the Network Startup Resource
Center and PSGnet/RAINet contains perhaps the most comprehensive
collection of information about country connectivity.
It's main Web server is: http://www.nsrc.org/
Many thanks to Randy Bush (randy@nsrc.org), John Klensin
(klensin@nsrc.org) and Steven Huter
(sghuter@nsrc.org) for setting-up this site and this
collaborative effort.
IX. Archiving
After each USENET release, the text version of this document is archived in a number of archive
sites around the world. Amongst them:
(#) those may not be accessible via Bear access or direct PC access
in some cases.
The document is also retrievable by E-mail from rtfm.mit.edu by
sending an E-mail to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu , blank subject line
and the command: send usenet/news.answers/mail/country-codes
The up-to-date, pre-release document is also available using a
simple mail-server robot:
Send E-mail to: robot@gih.com with a
Subject: archive-server-request
and the command: get mail/country-codes
in the body of your message.
The document is also distributed automatically once a month on a
mailing list. To subscribe to that mailing list, send a message
to: country-codes-request@nsrc.org
with the command in the body of the message (the Subject is ignored):subscribe
The whole collection of documents (monthly releases since 1992 !)
is available on: http://www.nsrc.org/oclb
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Olivier Crepin-Leblond
- ocl@gih.com