At 12:25 PM 3/9/2005 -0500, Tony Hansen wrote:
The IETF hasn't given up; it's simply regrouping.
This is good news. I have a lot of confidence in the integrity and wisdom
of this group. I just worry that they won't keep the uncompromising
advocates at arms length. This will require great wisdom in picking out
valid arguments from a flood of mind-boggling advocacy. I have this mental
image of a befuddled old judge and a glazed-eye jury listening to
conflicting expert witnesses.
There're groups of people actively working on each of the following:
Client SMTP Authorization (CSA)
Domain Name Accreditation (DNA)
Sender Policy Framework (SPF)
Sender ID
a combined Domain Keys and Identified Internet Mail (IIM)
Bounce Address Tag Validation (BATV)
These all have a lot of detail that the advocates will never agree on. I
don't see any thought as to how they will work together with competing
methods in the same transfer. I worry about experiments going on for a
year or more, and no clear conclusions because the real tests require
participation of a large part of the Internet population.
When a standard finally does emerge, it will than take another year for
writers of spam filters, MTAs, MUAs, etc. to start using the
standard. Spamnix, for example, has no current plans to use domain
names. The folks at SpamCop seem strongly opposed to any use of domain
names instead of IP addresses in their real-time lists.
We could cut a year off the adoption process if we could just agree on a
few simple items, like what the authentication headers will look like. I
don't mean all the details like we see now in Received-SPF, but just the
essentials - IP address, domain name, and result. The rest could be
optional parameters added by each method, maybe to be standardized later if
there really is a need.
-- Dave
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* David MacQuigg, PhD * email: dmq'at'gci-net.com * *
* IC Design Engineer * phone: USA 520-721-4583 * * *
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