1. As stated, the option leaves senders with an incentive to always
set high priority. It costs them nothing to do this. As we have seen with
spammers, some substantial portion of the community will in fact abuse the
option, thereby rendering useless. Some of you believe that human behavior
will be different from this projection; please explain.
Even if you assume this is true (past experience with priority facilities
indicates it is not), this ignores the need to lower as well as raise
priority. The single most widely deployed priority mechanism today,
the precedence, only provides a way to lower priority from the normal
level, not raise it. And this it is widely used for this purpose (among
others).
2. References to usage of SMTP Auth with this option are confusing,
since it is used for posting, not relaying. I'd appreciate clarification
to this point.
Read the spec. SMTP AUTH not only provides facility for posting, it also
provides facilities for relaying authentication credentials.
3. The proposal presumes that a simple rank-ordering approach, by
priority, is an appropriate queuing model for global Internet mail
relays. To the extent that the proposal attempts less than that -- for
example, simply trying to provide an advisory that each relay will use in
whatever way that it feels appropriate -- then it does little more than
substantiate the send-and-pray view of Internet mail. Users will have no
basis for knowing what to expect from the relay path. The purpose of QoS
mechanisms is to increase predictability. This will not achieve that.
I have no clear idea what "increase predictability" means, but I'm pretty
sure that nobody views priority as a means to achieve that end.
4. The IETF does not do intranet standards. This option looks quite
reasonable for use within a single administrative domain, where system-wide
handling policies can be established AND enforced. For the global
Internet, the Force is very much against successful operation.
Actually, the IETF does intranet standards all the time. This is especially
true if you equate administrative domains with intranets. By this rule POP3,
IMAP4 and SMTP submit are all intranet protocols that don't scale to the entire
Internet.
And as I pointed out above, even if you accept the notion that priority is only
useful in conjunction with authentication (I think authentication adds
considerable value but isn't required in some scenarios), the authentication
relay model that's very much a part of SMTP AUTH means it can be extended
past the boundaries of a single administative domain.
Ned