ietf-smtp
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Re: Submission and SMTP SRV records

2004-03-16 16:59:49

Offhand, it seems like just solving the configuration problem for mail submission is too much work for too little gain.

It seems to me if (e.g.) Hotmail (or even a large corporate network) could deploy an SRV for their submission servers (round-robin'ed or weighted appropriately) and clients supported the SRV, that would be a lot of bang for the buck in simplifying the most straightforward user configuration.

I guess I'm thinking that if the user still has to configure the choice of POP vs. IMAP, the server for POP or IMAP, the means of authenticating to POP or IMAP, "leave mail on server", and various other IMAP frobs that sometimes seem necessary, and how to authenticate to the submission server, getting rid of the "submission server" configuration item is a minor gain. especially when you probably have to add a "determine submission server automagically using SRV" check box.

What you'd really like to do is solve the entire MUA configuration problem.

That's what ACAP was supposed to do, but it hasn't gotten much traction, I think at least in part because it tried to solve the whole problem.

thought experiment: say you're an ISP. what incentive do you have to support ACAP?

Keith