CODEWITHSUNDEEP
emailunixcharacterlimits
Patratacus
Patratacus

Reputation: 1791

8-character limit on old email addresses

I have been trying to research this, but I can't seem to find a definite answer. Back in the early 1990s when email was rather new for the mass consumers the email addresses often had 8 character name @ something.xxx. Why was the 8 character limit chosen? I know that early email servers were running on UNIX. Are there any correlation between the limit and the server running on UNIX?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1734

Answers (2)

BillThor
BillThor

Reputation: 7576

Back then a variety of systems had an eight character limits for a number of things like file names, passwords, and userids. Some systems which allowed longer names required that they be unique in the first eight characters. Mail was usually delivered to a spool file based on the userid. Users preferred having the same userid accross systems, so following the least common denominator princpal, userids where usually eight characters or less.

Email ran on a variety of platforms, although until SMTP interconnectivity was limited.

This followed through to email addresses which were usually userid @ somesever. Even today, this is common. Aliases allow users to provide longer addresss like [email protected] which migtht be delivered to lastfi.

Upvotes: 2

James Anderson
James Anderson

Reputation: 27478

Early unixes allowed for longer user names BUT only looked at the first eight characters.

IBM mainframes, DEC minis before VMS, and most early micros were also restricted to eight characters.

The earliest email systems (dating from the early 80s and before standards SMTP etc, really came into effect) were on IBM mainframes, DEC minis and XEROX workstations.

Upvotes: 3

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