ietf-smtp
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Re: RFC2821bis new section 2.3.4 host-requirements

2005-08-24 04:43:17

That A record MUST point to the SMTP Client.
And the IP address of the SMTP client MUST resolve back to the hostname.

That may not be possible with multi-homing.

out-mail.example1.com     A    192.168.0.10
                          A    10.0.5.10
out-mail.example2.com     A    192.168.0.10
                          A    10.0.10.5
10.0.168.192.in-addr.arpa PTR  out-mail.example1.com
                          PTR  out-mail.example2.com
10.5.0.10.in-addr.arpa    PTR  out-mail.example1.com
5.10.0.10.in-addr.arpa    PTR  out-mail.example2.com

It's *possible* to set it up.  The biggest problems you hit are:

1) A *lot* of software doesn't understand that PTR records can be 
multi-valued.

2) An even more incredibly large number of sites don't do DNS-over-TCP or 
EDNS0,
so if the list of PTRs ends up over 512 bytes, things go pear-shaped quickly.



My idea was to distinghuis two differend kinds of SMTP-clients.
Clients that are conforming and should be allowed to send emails to any 
Mailserver that has MX records pointing at him.
And Clients that should use their Submission servers. (not fully capable 
clients)

There are rules for internet hosts, that they should have A and PTR records. 
(But to be honnest I could not found the RFCs in which this is spelled out)
And this is just a reminder of that, fully conforming SMTP-clients ARE internet 
host and therefore should conform to the rules of internet hosts. (As fas as 
they are resonable, so that is open to discussion on this forum)

I also want that RFC2821bis in its main sections only describes the interaction 
between fully capable systems.
But i agree in the (new) section about limited capable systems this 
requirements should be mitigated.

Hope this makes it clear.
And I hope somebody can give me references to the RFCs where these requirements 
are spelled out.



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