Pointer to FAQ: International E-mail accessibility (2000.12.01)

[ocl@salsa.gih.co.uk (Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond)]

Version date: 2000/12/01

The FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) document "mail/country-codes" 
has been recently distributed around Usenet and is available in 
the Usenet newsgroup news.answers
(and other newsgroups such as comp.mail.misc, comp.mail.uucp,
news.newusers.questions, alt.internet.services, alt.internet.access.wanted,
alt.answers and comp.answers). 

The document can also be downloaded in a number of different ways.

Via the Web:

http://www.nsrc.org/codes/country-codes.html (text mode)

http://www.nsrc.org/codes/bymap/world.html (Worldwide maps)

The whole collection of documents (monthly releases since 1992 !) 
is available on:    http://www.nsrc.org/oclb

Of particular interest are the pages on Internetology, with
a snapshot of world connectivity maps every 6 months since 1993, on:

http://www.nsrc.org/codes/bymap/ntlgy/
 
Here is a short extract of the latest version of the document:

--- snip --- snip --- snip --- 
Archive-name: mail/country-codes
Last-modified: 2000/12/01`

Based on International Standard ISO 3166 Codes
Compiled by Olivier M.J. Crepin-Leblond
E-mail: <ocl@gih.com>

Release: 2000.12.01


Release Notes:   a. Somalia (SO) with Full Internet (FI)
                    Eritrea (ER) with Full Internet (FI)
                 b. ICANN announces new Top Level Domains
                 c. Libya (LY) still in testing stage (PFI)
                 d. No major new connectivity in 3 months
                 e. Complete change of format:
                    Country Code, Connectivity, Name of Country

This document answers the question:

"Has country X got E-mail or Internet access ?". 

The following table is a guide of country codes, showing the 
countries which have access to Internet or general E-mail services.  
The country codes have been derived from the International 
Organization for Standardization standard ISO 3166 found on:
http://www.din.de/gremien/nas/nabd/iso3166ma/

A country code is taken as a top level domain once it is registered 
at the InterNIC, rs.internic.net so *not* all country codes listed 
are top level domains. At the bottom of the table, there is also 
a section of general top level domains, based on the information
available at rs.internic.net.

[...]

IX. Archiving

    At each release, this document is archived in a number of archive
sites around the world. Amongst them:

 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu:/pub/usenet/news.answers/mail/
#ftp://ftp.uu.net:/usenet/news.answers/mail/
 ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk:/usenet/news.answers/news.newusers.questions/

(#) those may not be accessible via Bear access or direct PC access
    in some cases. 

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: subscribe 

The whole collection of documents (monthly releases since 1992 !) 
is available on:   http://www.nsrc.org/oclb 


X. World-Wide-Web (WWW) documents

A sister document is available on the World Wide Web. It is based
on this FAQ, and has links to further information for each domain:

          http://www.nsrc.org/codes/country-codes.html

A set of clickable international colour-coded maps is available at:

          http://www.nsrc.org/codes/bymap/world.html

The pages are kindly hosted by the Network Startup Resource Center
in the University of Oregon as a service to the Internet community.

Web references for Top-Level information servers for a particular country
should be sent to <ocl@gih.com>.  Thanks to all who have helped !


XI. Internetology

The Internet has exploded in size in the last few years. 
The present document has been edited monthly since 1993, and some Web 
pages have been put together to reflect on the continuing spread of 
Internet/E-mail in the world since that time.

This section is called "Internetology".

It provides a graphical history of the spread of the Net in developing 
countries, by taking snapshots of Internet connectivity every six
months since November 1993. All of the maps tie-up with the 
information that is included with the FAQ on International E-mail 
accessibility.

The reference for the Internetology pages is:

           http://www.nsrc.org/codes/bymap/ntlgy/

-- 
Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond, Ph.D. |--> Global Information Highway Limited
Phone: +44 (0)7956 84 1113  | http://www.gih.com/ | E-mail: <ocl@gih.com>
Fax  : +44 (0)20 7937 7666  |   Always 60 seconds ahead of the past !



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