International E-mail Accessibility

Based on International Standard ISO 3166 Names

Compiled by Olivier M.J. Crepin-Leblond

E-mail: ocl@gih.com

[ Credits | FAQ Text version | Network Startup Resource Center ]
This document is © Copyright 1994-2003 by Olivier Crepin-Leblond.

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:

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The growth in international networking is such that the information contained in this document may be out of date by the time it reaches you.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.

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