ietf-smtp
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Re: retry question

2008-08-06 04:19:16

On Tue, 5 Aug 2008, Ned Freed wrote:

It depends on whether or not any recipients were accepted. If any were 
accepted
the message data needs to be sent and if accepted only the ones that gave a 
4yz
error should be retried. If all recipients got a 4yz you should abort and 
retry
the whole thing later.

Where is the text that explains this to an implementer without enough
common sense or experience with existing SMTPs?

There's even some text in section 4.5.4.1 which suggests the other
behaviour is correct: "When a mail message is to be delivered to
multiple recipients, and the SMTP server to which a copy of the
message is to be sent is the same for multiple recipients, then only
one copy of the message SHOULD be transmitted."

All this is saying is that it is a good idea not to use separate transactions
to send the same messages to multiple recipients on the same destination host
unless you have to. It says nothing about the temporary failure case and how 
to
handle it.

I understand that, but since there's no text about how clients should
handle a mixed bag of good bad and ugly recipients, I can see how an
implementer could get it wrong.

Tony.
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