SERVICE PROVIDER


Deciding which protocols and services to offer in the xSP environment
Another aspect of planning a hosted environment is determining which services to offer to customers. There are some considerations unique to the IBM® Lotus® Domino® service provider environment that you will need to take into consideration when determining which protocols (services) you are offering to hosted organizations.

If you are offering mail services, you must provide the protocols to support them. If you do not offer mail services, you do not need the POP3, IMAP, or SMTP protocols.
Protocol/ServiceRequirement
HTTP with Lotus iNotesWhen sending mail via Lotus iNotes, enable HTTP on the server that stores the mail file
IIOPDomino IIOP is required to run Java™ code.
LDAPIf you use POP3 or IMAP and the client mail application supports LDAP, you can also use LDAP to provide the mail clients with addressing services.

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is a standard Internet protocol for accessing and managing directory information. If LDAP will be used with the Domino Directory, the LDAP protocol must be started.

POP3 and IMAPPOP3 and IMAP are access protocols only, that is, they retrieve mail. SMTP is required to enable POP3 and IMAP users to send mail. Additionally, the POP3 or IMAP client must be configured to send mail via an SMTP server.
SSLSSL can be used in addition to Domino's security services. SSL supports data encryption to and from clients and provides message-tampering detection and optional client authentication.

Note SSL is supported only for hosted environments that use a unique IP address configuration.


Resolving mail addresses in a hosted environment

IP addresses are resolved via the Domain Name System (DNS), local host file, or a combination of the two.

For ease-of-access and ease-of-administration, you can use host names and Web site names to resolve mail addresses and to process transactions. The following table indicates which names are used by each protocol.
NameProtocol
Server host name

For example, serverA.corporation.com

POP3 and IMAP clients use server host names to locate host servers when retrieving mail.

Inbound HTTP transactions can use server host names when resolving transactions.

LDAP clients use server host names when performing directory lookups.

Web browsers can use server host names in URLs, in addition to other types of DNS names.

Web site name
For example, www.corporation.com
HTTP transactions are resolved via Web site name.
The domain portion of an Internet e-mail address. For example, the corporation.com portion of the e-mail address JUser@corporation.comSMTP mail transactions use the domain portion of an Internet e-mail address. This domain name must also be entered in the Global Domain document. MX records must designate the IP addresses for the servers receiving SMTP mail.
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