In <066c01c71aed$0add6000$0601a8c0(_at_)pc6> "Tom Petch"
<nwnetworks(_at_)dial(_dot_)pipex(_dot_)com> writes:
* What format are DSN messages generated in? Do they conform to
RFC 3464? Do they contain all relevant information? Is it presented in
a human (user) readable manner?
Do they contain the complete undelivered message or just part of it?
Not exactly research but .....
Thanks, it was interesting and useful.
The assumption here is that bounce messages will most often be
delivered to and viewed by a lay, non-technical user, one with no
particular skills in SMTP, one who perhaps thinks that DSN is a
dyslexic reference to the Domain Name System and that worms are
responsible for the health of the soil. As such, the message should
convey its intent in simple, unemotional terms, telling the
recipient what has happened and what they might do about it.
IMHO, the single most important thing a mail admin can do to improve
the usefulness of the bounce messages is to make sure as many of the
rejected e-mails get rejected *during* the SMTP session instead of
accepting the email and then generating a bounce. This, will cause
the sending MTA to generate the bounce.
While the bounce that the sending MTA generates may not be as clear or
informative as possible, it will at least be in a format that the user
of that system will be familiar with. More over, when you say things
like subject lines of "Deilvery Status Notification" are clearer than
"Mail System Error", you are assuming that the user can understand
English, something that is often not the case.
Your list of MTAs and how many bounces you received from them is
somewhat enlightening, but people need to take into account that
almost(?) all of them were because the worms were not rejected during
the SMTP session on the first SMTP hop. Higher numbers could mean
that many more MTAs use that particular software, or it could mean
that they do accept-then-bounce. Or, I guess, that they are often use
as submission servers (ISP, etc.) or for email forwarding and they
don't do good egress filtering.
Anyway, thanks again.
-wayne
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