The AFTN/AMHS Gateway is an ICAO SARPs compliant MTCU that allows the conversion of AFTN messages to AMHS and vice versa. The  AFTN/AMHS Gateway is written in Java and runs co-located with Isode’s M-Switch Gateway.

Key features

  • Full ICAO Doc9880 compliance.
  • A Monitoring and Management console to configure and monitor the operation of the MTCU component.
  • Tight integration with M-Switch’s MConsole for logging and message auditing
  • Flexible AFTN ↔ AMHS address conversion, using either an ICAO compliant X.500 ATN Directory, or the EUROCONTROL AMC Tables with conversion information.
  • Supports both XF and CAAS addressing schemes
  • Supports the Extended ATS Message Handling Service
  • Support of the generation and reception of messages in both Basic Encoding and Extended Encoding [IHE]
  • Support the use of Directory [DIR]
  • HTTP monitoring

Integration

The integration with the AFTN Switch can be achieved:

  • Through the use of the standard Internet Protocol (IP) sockets
  • By using a shared file system, and then reading and writing messages in configurable directories

X.400 P1 Connectivity

Isode M-Switch Gateway is usually operated over TCP/IP using ITOT (ISO Transport over TCP).  Both IPv4 and IPv6 are supported. It is also possible to connect M-Switch X.400 (and therefore the AMHS/AFTN Gateway) to an ATN Router, for full OSI stack support, including TP0 and TP4.

Availability

The AFTN/AMHS Gateway runs on Windows (all versions from 2016, 2019 and 2022 Server, Windows 10 and 11), Linux (Redhat 7, 8, Ubuntu 22.04, etc).

Conformance

ICAO Conformance
  • ICAO Doc 9880, Second Edition – 2016
  • ICAO Annex 10, Volume II.
  • Extended ATS Message Handling Services
  • ATS Messaging Management Manual (Eur Doc 021)
  • EUR AMHS Manual, version 12.0 (Eur Doc 020)
X.400 Conformance

An MTA must support Message Transfer, using the X.400 P1 protocol. M-Switch is conformant to the core ISP requirements for the 1984, 1988, and 1996, 1999 and 2003 versions of X.400

  • Common Messaging: Message Transfer (P1) – AMH11 (based on ISP 10611 – 3/AMH11)
  • IPM: Requirements for Message Transfer (P1) l (based on ISP 12062 – 3/AMH22)

The AFTN/AMHS Gateway is conformant to the core ISP requirements for the 1984, 1988, and 1996, 1999 and 2003 versions of X.400. In particular, is also complies with:

  • ISO/IEC ISP 10611-4:2003 / AMH12-MTS Access (P3)
  • ISO/IEC ISP 10611-6: 2003 / AMH13-MS Access (P7)