there's the mundane but nevertheless real issue that
administrative control over a domain's email policies and
administrative
control over a domain's DNS entries may not be the same.
I really don't see this as a big deal. There *already* has to be
communication between whoever controls the DNS zone and whoever
controls the email system with respect to the MX records.
This was my primary inspiration [2] for using DNS, notably forward DNS. The
organization that controls a DNS domain [1] ultimately controls its e-mail
policy based on mail exchange records. Otherwise you'd be writing
gordonf(_at_)206(_dot_)45(_dot_)235(_dot_)30 and not
gordonf(_at_)pan-am(_dot_)ca if you wanted to write me. I
imagine all authors using records in forward DNS were similarly inspired.
There are political issues with regard to who has this control, but DNS
hosting is a very competitive market. Joe Sixpack can choose from any number
of hosts who can cater to his needs if he isn't technically adept enough to
host his own domain, and he will change DNS providers if his current provider
pisses him off. Once we're done, Joe Sixpack can look forward to DNS
providers that offer sender verification for his e-mail in varying flavours,
such as supporting dynamic IP, providing mailbox and relay services for his
domain, and so on.
Others have told me how hosting is such a low-margin market and tech support
is the most neglected aspect of the business. I feel sorry for DNS host
customers, then. I've changed ISPs twice because of pathetic tech support
and up here in Nowhere Manitoba, my choices are limited to The Phone Company
and The Cable Company. On the bright side, tech support improved noticably
over the past twelve months between these two. Someone must be listening.
DNS hosts will learn to deal with what we come up with if their customers ask
for it. DNS vendors likewise.[3]
[1] Yes, there are security matters regarding who really has this control and
they were addressed in a draft whose title I forget at the moment. I was
under the impression most of these were implementation problems and not flaws
in the protocol itself before then. Still, I don't think they're a detriment
to anything we come up with here. DNS as a database has been under constant
attack since at least 1997, yet it survives.
[2] The secondary inspiration, for me anyway, was that DNS will be used to
look up any sender database if it didn't use DNS as its main protocol anyway.
To look up such a database by name on the Internet you need DNS. So, why
bother with the middleman?
[3] I really had this happen once. I asked Microsoft for wildcard support
for all DNS record types instead of just MX records back before NT4 Service
Pack 4. I must've been one of many people who asked because complete
wildcard support appeared in Service Pack 4. Vendors do listen. They get
paid to please the customer.
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GOD BLESS AMER, er, THE INTERNET. <http://vmyths.com/rant.cfm?id=401&page=4>