Hector Santos <hsantos(_at_)santronics(_dot_)com> writes:
Just consider what you are believe. If this was the case, then you
would be implying that the majority of all world wide transacitons take
35 or more seconds just to complete the first RCPT TO command providing
you a minimum of 35+ total transaction time (not including the payload
transfer time and any possible MFA delays).
Using "the real world" synonymously with "a majority" is an extremely
idiosyncratic usage. I don't believe I've ever seen that usage before.
Given that, I don't think you should find it particularly suprising that
people don't understand what you're talking about when you use the term
with that definition and don't define it first.
Incidentally, one can make a fairly strong argument that the whole point
of standards is to get things to work in edge and minority cases. If all
we ever cared about was working with a majority of sites a majority of the
time, a standard often wouldn't be necessary.
The context of the statement is based on the OP assertion that low
timeouts (35 seconds in this case) "will not work in the real world of
internet email" which implies the majority of all systems.
For what it's worth, I would never have read that meaning into that
sentence. I read that sentence as saying that using such a timeout would
break in real-world cases (as opposed to only violating some theoretical
and unnecessary principle in a standard). And, in fact, it did.
Whether you care or not is another question.
--
Russ Allbery (rra(_at_)stanford(_dot_)edu)
<http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>