I agree with Scott: people seem unwilling to make hard choices. The SMTP
protocol is old, ideal for spammers and inefficient. Any textbook covering
communication between tiers have one basic rule: avoid communication as much
as possible. The ideal solution is to send all at once and if necessary
receive a receipt containing the data you want or an error message. Any new
standard ought to be built on this simple principle. Why HELO? Send
everything and let the receiving server go through the sender's data
returning the appropriate answer.
To implement a pull system you do not need a concensus among mail server
administrators. A pull server ought to send a notofication all at once. If
an error message is returned the mail is sent using SMTP.
If a client hails a pull server with a special code the communication is
done using a pull protocol otherwise it is done using SMTP/POP.
To implement a pull system (client and server) would take at most two weeks
full job. Actually my students are going to test the idea in a final lab in
a web service course. Using web service technologies is probably not the
most efficient way but to test the idea it is sufficient.
/DK
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