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Re: We need an IETF BCP for GREY LISTING

2011-10-16 13:42:23

On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 01:42:18PM -0400, Hector wrote:
Here is the thing, IMO, the prize at the end of the day is:

      Fastest, less waste in Delivery and High Throughput

For many, an email today has "No Value" tomorrow, especially in the
business world.  I'm sure that is the normal expectation for most
systems and people expecting timely emails.

The problem here, I think, isn't the technology: it's unrealistic and/or
misplaced expectations.  If I might quote my own haiku on this subject:

        Mail is not the web
        Mail is not for file transfer
        Mail is not I M

It's certainly true that a subset of people expect mail to be very
fast; it might even be true that this subset is large enough that
it's "normal".  But I don't think that necessarily means we should
engineer to meet that expectation, just as I don't think the propensity
of some people to attempt transfer of 100M files via email means that
we should engineer to make that feasible.

On the other side of that, I do recognize that inordinate mail delays
do occasionally matter; but I'll argue that (a) these are rare, absent
outages/misconfigurations that would still persist even if greylisting
were handled very effectively and (b) these are often caused by
non-greylisting measures of dubious use.  (I'll cite "quarantines" and
"quotas" as examples of the latter, but will omit for brevity the lengthy
arguments I've made elsewhere about why they're a horrible idea.)
(And let me cite "poor choice of mail service technology or provider"
as another, especially in light of the past week's events involving
a well-known operation which is experiencing systemic, prolonged outages,
please see the NANOG list for extensive discussion.)

Maybe a shorter way to put that last paragraph is that if we agree that
reasonably timely delivery of mail is a Good Thing, then I think we have
many other problems to tackle before we turn our attention to greylisting.

---rsk