ietf-smtp
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Re: Proposal for Adjusted DATA Timeout

2008-05-23 07:44:29

--On Friday, 23 May, 2008 07:58 -0400 Hector Santos
<hsantos(_at_)santronics(_dot_)com> wrote:


Hi,

I am wondering if writing a I-D or BCP is worth the effort
here and your comments are welcome.

Basically, with the advent of larger emails and the direction
of mail sophisticated mail receivers performing DATA
pre-response callouts to process the message before
determining what the response code will be, there is a greater
potential for client timeout issues, duplicate resends and
messages and of course, wasteful bandwidths and overheads.
...

Hector,

I'm not quite sure what you are proposing here.  Examples:

        * If the client sends SIZE with a big number, it should
        wait longer?
        
        * If the client knows that it is sending a big payload,
        it should wait longer.
        
        * The server should advertise, presumably as part of a
        an extension announcement, "I'm a little slow, so, if
        you send a lot of stuff, give me extra time".

Something else?

Clearly nothing in SMTP today prevents a client from using a
longer timeout if it thinks that is justified.  On the other
hand, for a pair of SMTP implementation connected to the
Internet with decent broadband connections (or better) 10
minutes is a very long period of time unless one of them is
bogged down for other reasons.  So I wonder if longer timeouts
alone would solve the problem or whether some sort of clunking
or restart facility would be a better solution.

    john