ietf-asrg
[Top] [All Lists]

RE: [Asrg] RMX proposals and Nash Equilibrium

2003-05-03 20:22:08


On Sat, 3 May 2003, Eric D. Williams wrote:


I could definitely be wrong but that always sticks out to me as a 
mis-understanding of that type of proposed solution/strategy.  I don't think 
the forwarder of mail has to be penalized for forwarding if they are properly 
registered in the forwarding path (open-relays are another matter in my 
opinion) and are no longer used in the historical context (helping a 
brother/sister system out).

Perhaps I wasn't clear. If joe(_at_)example(_dot_)com adds the line:

     joe: joe(_at_)example(_dot_)net

to the system aliases file, then mail arriving from source.com will be
forwarded to example.net. But example.com will not be on the list of
authorized originators of source.com mail, and if example.net rejects
for that reason they may be rejecting perfectly legitimate mail. 

It really has nothing to do with relays, open or otherwise.

I mentioned the Sendmail REDIRECT feature as a possible ameliorative
feature for this problem. Sendmail could be configured to reject the mail
for joe at example.com with a 551 error and give the forwarding address in
the error message text, allowing the original sender to try again at the
new address. I don't know of any MTA or MUA that would automate that
process, nor does a half hour with Google turn up any mention of REDIRECT
used in this context. But it is mentioned several times in RFC 1123,
specifically in Section 3.4 as return code 551. I am not suggesting that
this is a real solution to the problem, but it is an example of what sites
might turn to if RMX proposals were widely adopted.




_______________________________________________
Asrg mailing list
Asrg(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/asrg