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Re: email-arch intro

2009-05-15 01:30:37

Pete Resnick wrote:


- I *do* want this document to be used as a club against proposed protocols, especially when they have no implementation base, if those protocols differ significantly from the architecture *without any explanation*. When someone comes along and writes a protocol or implementation that assumes that the RFC5321.MailFrom is the author of the text of the message, I want to be able to say, "Look dude! That's not what RFC5321.MailFrom is for. Go read the bloody architecture and get your mind right, or give me a long interesting explanation about how the state of the world you live in is different than what the architecture says and convince me that your use is reasonable."

Architecturally (flow chart wise), the document is fine, but I think the better "billy club example" for what clearly sticks out is the high potential when someone says based on it:

       "Dude, aren't you sending a DSN?"
       or
       "Dude, aren't you using Sieve?"
       "Dude, why did your Sieve process reject my mail?"

and you says:

      "Dude, we am not using any of those."

We had a support call just the other day that touch base with it. A company who walks, talks, smells like a spammer who didn't know about protocols and methods but was asked by a receiver to give more details showing why he was being blocked by them (no 200 response was what we finally find out). What details did he want when they both didn't even understand that no one was answering the door. Yet, they were throwing buzz words out like DSN, at each other and at us. What he got from our smtp server was an exhausted 72 attempts retry bounce message.

It also curious to me what he blurted out.

    "I've been told for the last two years or say, reputation
     is becoming more important. Is there anything we can do
     in the software to improve it?"

So is the document architecturally dated for this new era of this sort of mindset?

Don't get me wrong, the document is useful and needed. My only real nit (if there is one) is that it can be used as a checklist even against the well established, maybe not by your definition of "well established," but established nonetheless.


--
Sincerely

Hector Santos
http://www.santronics.com

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