Re: Email System Model
2009-05-22 09:57:45
ned+ietf-smtp(_at_)mrochek(_dot_)com wrote:
Externally administered backup MXes run into backscattering because
they don't maintain a copy of the users database.
Some don't, many do.
Hm... would you expand on that, please? I browsed a few backup MX
providers (DydDNS, ZoneEdit and Mailfail) and saw no evidence that
they do.
You're looking at commercial backup provision services. Historically this isn't
how backuup MX arrangements have worked. Most of them are simply one small site
helping out another. In such cases providing a copy of your address list often
isn't a big deal.
Offering backup MX services to a 98+% uptime server didn't require
much resource allocation, at the time. Holding a cache copy of the
users database may be slightly heavier.
In fact there's even a suggested protocol for it. I don't recall the draft
name, but it works by putting the address list in the DNS. You then use
zone transfer to move the data around and keep it up to date.
I only found "Minger", Expires: January 9, 2009
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-hathcock-minger
In short, it provides an UDP-based security-enhanced alternative to
VRFY, and uses no DNS. It might have worked, but would have required a
backup minger server...
in principle, users should be aware of what organizations
take part in managing their data. Currently, that info is relegated to
a non-machine readable ISP's policy page, if any.
That's ... idealistc, I must say. I doubt very much if most administrators
agree that simply the list of active addresses, with no additional attached
data whatsoever, in their domains have such serious privacy implications.
Serious or not, it is what privacy laws require in several countries.
While a policy page is enough for the law, I think privacy concerned
users would appreciate the ability to retrieve the effective list of
servers where their email addresses are stored. I agree it's an
idealistic wish, and it will probably remain that way until some
marketing function will say otherwise.
The rule to strip subaddresses is a good point. Apparently, a regex
might suffice,
At one point I suggested using NAPTR records as part of the address
distribution protocol for secondaries in order to get exactly this effect.
Is it practical to use DNS at all for this purpose? Why not LDAP, SQL,
rsync, or ...? Regexes could also be passed along with other metadata,
such as agreements on DNSBLs, whitelists, etcetera (and what of that
can be overridden by per-user flags.)
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- Re: Email System Model, (continued)
- Re: Email System Model, ned+ietf-smtp
- Re: Email System Model, John Levine
- Re: Email System Model, ned+ietf-smtp
- Re: Email System Model, John R Levine
- Re: Email System Model, Arnt Gulbrandsen
- Re: Email System Model, ned+ietf-smtp
- Re: Email System Model, Russ Allbery
- Re: Email System Model, Douglas Otis
- Re: Email System Model,
Alessandro Vesely <=
- Backup MXes (was: Re: Email System Model, Alessandro Vesely
- Re: Backup MXes (was: Re: Email System Model, John C Klensin
Re: Email System Model, Hector Santos
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