Group 5 Standard Unites E-Mail and Fax

Where fax and e-mail really differ is in their respective levels of security and reliability. Fax as a point-to-point system is less vulnerable to third-party interference than e-mail transported over the public Internet. On the other hand, e-mail is usually delivered to a password-protected mailbox, whereas at the receiving fax machine, a fax is readable by anyone.

A new standard under development by the Group 5 Messaging Forum will finally tie together the fax and e-mail worlds . "The G5 messaging standard combines the best of both systems and then goes on to add a further level of security and usability," says Chris Oswald, managing director of Equisys and chairman of the G5 marketing committee. Other members of the G5 Forum include Brooktrout Technology, Gammalink, INSO Corporation, Lotus/SoftSwitch, Microsoft, Phillips, Rockwell, Symantec Delrina, U.S. Robotics, and Xerox Corporation.

The G5 Forum was formed in order to develop a new integrated messaging standard that handles any data file by itself or in compound form and is able to cater to future unified messaging needs. The G5 protocol has been designed to seamlessly integrate with Group 3 fax, Internet e-mail, and LAN e-mail. This means that in order to send a message to multiple recipients using any mix of Group 3 fax, Internet e-mail, and full G5 messaging, the user will not need to specify the transport service in use by the recipient.

For messages transferred between G5 syste ms, the recipient automatically sends back a confirmation (postmark) containing the receive time, message identification, and authentication codes. The original and confirmation postmarks can be stored at the points of transmission and receipt, providing mutual nonrepudiation of the message and its contents. G5 messaging also includes automatic archiving of both inbound and outbound messages together with transmission details.

The G5 messaging specification is based on Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME). The standard provides for transmission and identification of any file type that's registered with the Internet MIME registry, Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). The G5 message header, for example, is a new MIME file type.

G5 Messaging is designed to operate over a variety of underlying data transport mechanisms in a fashion that is independent of the particular transport used. Supported transport protocols include V.34, T.30, and T.434. Other transport mechanisms such as ISDN or wireless networks might be employed in the future. In addition, the G5 service integrates with an X.500 distributed directory service using an access protocol that is based on the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP).