Mailbox Names for Common Services, Roles and Functions

Status of this Memo This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. ABSTRACT This specification enumerates and describes Internet mail addresses (mailbox name @ host reference) to be used when contacting personnel at an organization. Mailbox names are provided for both operations and business functions. Additional mailbox names and aliases are not prohibited, but organizations which support email exchanges with the Internet are encouraged to support AT LEAST each mailbox name for which the associated function exists within the organization. 1. RATIONALE AND SCOPE Various Internet documents have specified mailbox names to be used when reaching the operators of the new service; for example, [RFC822 6.3, C.6] requires the presence of a mailbox name on all hosts that have an SMTP server. Other protocols have defacto standards for well known mailbox names, such as for NNTP (see [RFC977]), and for HTTP (see [HTTP]). Defacto standards also exist for well known mailbox names which have nothing to do with a particular protocol, e.g., and . The purpose of this memo is to aggregate and specify the basic set of mailbox names which organizations need to support. Most organizations do not need to support the full set of mailbox names defined here, since not every organization will implement the all of the associated services. However, if a given service is offerred, then the associated mailbox name(es) must be supported, resulting in delivery to a recipient appropriate for the referenced service or role.