ietf-smtp
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Re: Sender's Declaration of Identity

2005-05-17 08:06:44

At 07:19 AM 5/17/2005 -0400, Bruce Lilly wrote:

On Sun May 15 2005 21:23, David MacQuigg wrote:
> My main concern is backward compatibility.  Here are the
> relevant paragraphs:
>
>     EHLO  mailserver7.my-company.com
>     ID  mycompany.com
>     MAIL FROM: bob(_at_)sales(_dot_)my-company(_dot_)com
>
>     ...
>
>     The proposed syntax will require extension of SMTP standard [RFC-
>     2821] and changes in current MTA software and practices.  See section
>     7. IANA Considerations.
>
>     MTA software will need to be enhanced and deployed at sites that
>     provide email authentication.  To minimize upgrade efforts these
>     changes should be bundled with the upgrade to enable authentication.
>
>     Receivers that don't recognize the ID command should return a Reply
>     Code 500 COMMAND UNRECOGNIZED.
[...]

This is NOT backward compatible.  See separate message on ietf-smtp for
an overview and pointers to detailed references.

Bruce, I appreciate your general advice, and I do read it carefully. I'll need something more specific in this case, however.

I assume from the position of your comment above, that you are objecting to the expectation that Reply Code 500 could be a normal and harmless response. The key question for me is - Will it actually break something? I've tried sending the ID command to a variety of receivers using different server software, and they all respond with either 500 or 502, yes even Hector's super-strict Winserver!

--
Dave
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