Postfix, one of the three main stream email open source systems, announced on its official homepage a new postfix system which support Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Email Address Internationalization. China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) has dominantly set up a core international standard for Email Address Internationalization ——extended SMTP support for Email Address Internationalization (No.RFC6531) and has given their strong support to the development of the first version of Postfix.

The sending-out of the first Internationalized email in June 2012 and the protocol  set up dominantly by CNNIC have greatly expanded our influence and given us more say in the field of the international standard for internet. Vice Minister of Propaganda, chief of Central Leading Group for Internet Security and Informatization, chief of China National Internet Information Office Lu Wei mentioned at the ICANN 50th London Assembly which just ended that supports will be given to CNNIC's promotion of the national top level domain supporting IPV6, Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC), Chinese email etc to push our country toward the next generation of secure and reliable internet. With the implementation of the ICANN's new generic top level domain program, Chinese domains will be key drivers in pushing the transition to next generation's internet,  Chinese emails, as typical applications in Chinese domains, will be important propellers in promoting  the prevalence of Chinese domain. Postfix system developed by CNNIC, IETF technical experts and open source systems experts is a great achievement in the Internationalized application of Chinese email, benefiting all the Chinese communities as well as non-English communities across the world.

Postfix, one of the three main stream email open source systems-the other are Qmail and Sendmail- originated in 1996 and was a message transfer agent (MTA)software developed under IBM's GPL protocol by famous security expert Wietse Venema. Due to the unique design concept,Postfix has become an open source system of richness in function and of excellence in expandability and security after 10 years of development. Some experts believe, based on the global popularity of Postfix, the introduction of Postfix which support Email Address Internationalization would facilitate the application of Internationalized email around the world.

Fig.1: the release of the first version of EAI POSTFIX sponsored by CNNIC

A general belief held by the profession is that the announcement by an international main stream open source software that they would support Email Address Internationalization would greatly promote the prevalence of Email Address Internationalization after Coremail became the first domestic commercial corporate in email system and service which supports Email Address Internationalization. Many Postfix-based email company will be able to download free postfix to build their own internationalized email systems. Download is available at postfix's global download centre. Links: http://www.postfix.org/download.html

At present, Postfix's support for Email Address Internationalization has updated to the version of Postfix 2.12 experimental release, i.e. the system function has reached its online level, and a formal version could be issued after its code runs stably for a while.

Fig2: the Release Notes of EAI POSTFIX

An introduction to Internationalized email:
An Internationalized email is a mail which uses an internationalized email box. An internationalized email box refers to an email box address which contains Chinese characters, Japanese characters and other non-English characters, such as “钱华林@中科院.中国”. Previous email technology protocol does not support the transmission of a email through an internationalized email box. To support the use of a internationalized email box, it must support an International technical standards for Email Address Internationalization (also called internationalised email address) set by an international organization of Internet technology IETF.