From: ned(_dot_)freed(_at_)innosoft(_dot_)com
Subject: Re: confidential subject lines -> use content description field w/
pgp/mime?
Date: Wed, 07 Jun 2000 22:15:09 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <01JQC5NHEOFM0009XA(_at_)mauve(_dot_)mrochek(_dot_)com>
for RCPT TO though, the best i've come up w/ so far is to specify an
address that forwards received messages to other forwarders or to the
ultimate recipient. is it possible to do better than this?
The RCPT TO needs to be the address of the BSMTP processor.
hmm, so making the RCPT TO (of the outer envelope) an address that
will forward to the address of the BSMTP processor won't work? i
don't understand why. what am i missing?
Nothing; it can be any address that gets to the processor. Any amount
of aliasing or forwarding is fine. But the more actual recipients
associated with a single outer address, the better.
p.s. does anyone know of any bsmtp processor implementations?
There are a bunch, although many of them are likely not in full compliance with
the RFC, which specifies support for certain aspects of ESMTP. Remember, the
entire BITNET network was implemented using BSMTP to get around the 8X8 address
limit of NJE. In its heyday BITNET amounted to several thousand systems running
on a variety of hardware and software platforms.
One implementation that is up to date is the one in PMDF, which is descended
from our BITNET handling code. The same code is also in SIMS.
I also doubt if we would have written the specification had we not had an
actual implementation in hand. The BITNET experience showed that turning an
interactive protocol into a batch protocol has some subtle spots to it.
Ned