A wide variety of non-Internet email address formats were used in early email systems before the ubiquity of the ''john.smith@example.com'' form used by

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

mail systems since the 1980s - and a few are still used in specialised contexts.

Single system

The earliest email addresses simply had to identify one user from another on one homogenous system, often a single host minicomputer or mainframe. They were therefore typically the user's

login name A user is a person who utilizes a computer or network service. A user often has a user account and is identified to the system by a username (or user name). Other terms for username include login name, screenname (or screen name), acco ...

on that system. Examples of this style include: * ATS: ''123'' *

CompuServe CompuServe (CompuServe Information Service, also known by its initialism CIS) was an American online service provider, the first major commercial one in the world – described in 1994 as "the oldest of the Big Three information services (the oth ...

: ''432654,6564'' *

MCI Mail MCI Mail was one of the first ever commercial email services in the United States and one of the largest telecommunication services in the world. Operated by MCI Communications Corp. from 1983 to 2003, MCI Mail offered its customers a low cost and ...

: ''373-1994'' * AOL: ''Steve Case''

At a host

As computer systems became networked email addresses needed to be able to identify not only the user, but also which host or mail system they were on. Addresses of this type were used in a number of early email systems, including: *

ARPANET The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the technical fou ...

: ''jim@washington'' * PROFS: ''userid@node'' *

DECnet DECnet is a suite of network protocols created by Digital Equipment Corporation. Originally released in 1975 in order to connect two PDP-11 minicomputers, it evolved into one of the first peer-to-peer network architectures, thus transforming DEC ...

: ''host::user'' (e.g. DECWRL::WRL-TECHREPORTS) * cc:Mail: ''John Alexopoulos at MicroCircuits'' * MHS: Barry@MICROSOFT

Delivery path

Some email address schemes described the ''path'' through multiple hosts needed to deliver email. This worked well only if the first host given in the path was sufficiently well known for the sender's system to be able to contact it. *

UUCP UUCP is an acronym of Unix-to-Unix Copy. The term generally refers to a suite of computer programs and protocols allowing remote execution of commands and transfer of files, email and netnews between computers. A command named is one of the pr ...

bang path UUCP is an acronym of Unix-to-Unix Copy. The term generally refers to a suite of computer programs and protocols allowing remote execution of commands and transfer of files, email and netnews between computers. A command named is one of the ...

": ''reed!percival!bucket!lisag'' ( example on a business card)

Hierarchical

Hierarchical addressing schemes are naturally able to expand. The modern Internet email address (e.g. ''john.smith@example.com''), is of this type - but it was also used by a number of early systems, including: * Banyan VINES: ''Ed Hirsch@Faculty@Univ'' * Grey Book: ''USERID@UK.AC.CAM.ENG'' * FidoNET: ''lenz @ 2:331:113.1'' *

Lotus Notes HCL Notes (formerly IBM Notes and Lotus Notes; see Branding below) and HCL Domino (formerly IBM Domino and Lotus Domino) are the client and server Server may refer to: Computing *Server (computing), a computer program or a device that provide ...

: '' Tyler Hamilton/Sales@Europe''

Directory systems

In this type of system, there is no one unique address for a specific user, but instead a series of attributes, not all of which may be needed to identify the user. For convenience however, there may be recommended formats for sharing on business cards and similar contexts, such as: * X.400: ''C=no;ADMD= ;PRMD=uninett;O=sintef;OU=delab;S=Alvestrand;G=Harald''"Short Hand X.400 Address Notation"
1989, RARE/CERN

References

{{reflist, 30em Email