Your Internet Consultant - The FAQs of Life Online
For a complete and up-to-date listing of how to send mail from just about any network to any other, read the "Inter-Network Mail Guide" edited by Scott Yanoff. You can fetch this guide by anonymous FTP in csd4.csd.uwm.edu:/pub/internetwork-mail-guide.
It's also available on the Usenet newsgroups comp.mail.misc, alt.internet.services, and news.answers.
America Online. user@aol.com
Use all lowercase and remove any spaces in the AOL username. For example, savetz@aol.com. AOL splits long Internet e-mail messages into chunks under 27K. Users of the DOS-based PC/AOL software are limited to a maximum mail size of 8Kb. For all AOL users, funky characters (hearts, moons, clovers, diamonds and any other non-alphanumeric characters your terminal can conjure up) are replaced with spaces.
Applelink. user@applelink.apple.com
AT&T Mail. user@attmail.com
Bitnet. user@host.bitnet
(The Bitnet hostname isn't necessarily the same as the Internet host name.) If this fails, your machine's SMTP server may not be up to date, so try directing your mail through a gateway such as cunyvm.cuny.edu, pucc.princeton.edu, or wuvmd.wustl.edu. The address would be as follows: user%domain.bitnet@pucc.princeton.edu (or cunyvm or wuvmd).
BIX. user@bix.com
Compuserve. userid@compuserve.com
Use the recipient's numeric CompuServe identification number, but use a period instead of a comma to separate the number sets. For example, to send mail to CompuServe user 17770,101, mail to 17770.101@compuserve.com.
Connect. user@dcjcon.das.net
Delphi. user@delphi.com
eWorld. user@eworld.com
Fidonet. firstname.lastname@p#.f#.n#.z#.fidonet.org
To send mail to FidoNet users, you not only need the names, but the exact FidoNet addresses they use. FidoNet addresses are broken down into zones, net, nodes, and (optionally) points. For example, the address of one Fido BBS is 1:102/834. The zone is 1, the net is 102, the node is 834. A user's address could include a point as well: 1:102/834.1; the final 1 is the point. So to send mail to John Smith at Fido address 1:102/834, e-mail to John.Smith@f834.n102.z1.fidonet.org. To send mail to that user at Fido address 1:102/834.1, e-mail to John.Smith@p1.f834.n102.z1.fidonet.org.
GEnie. user@genie.geis.com
Where user is their mail address. If a user tells you their mail address is xyz12345 or something similar, it isn't. It usually looks like A.BEEBER42 where A is their first initial, BEEBER is their last name, and 42 is a number distinguishing them from all other A.BEEBER's.
Internet. user@host.domain
Where user is the recipient's login name, and domain is the full name and location of the computer where he or she receives e-mail. Examples are savetz@rahul.net and an017@cleveland.freenet.edu.
MCI Mail. user@mcimail.com
User can be a numeric identification (which is always 7 digits long or 3 zeroes followed by 7 digits), their account name (which is one word) or first and last names separated with an underline. (for example, 0001234567@mcimail.com, 123-4567@mcimail.com or John_Edward_Doe@mcimail.com.)
National Videotext Network. user@nvn.com
NVN is another national online service, a la delphi, but less well known. I think it should stay.
NVN and eWorld and the WELL conform to the basic user@host.domain format, agreed. However that doesn't mean that the reader-user knows what the host.domain is for a particular service. That's why they are included, and why I think they should stay.
PC Link. user@aol.com
Incoming mail is limited to 27K. (There is no pclink.com domain. PC Link is owned by America Online, hence the aol.com domain.)
Prodigy. userid@prodigy.com
A user ID looks like BVXF64A.
Whole Earth 'lectronic Link (WELL). user@well.sf.ca.us