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Re: [ietf-smtp] Dotless domains and email

2013-07-05 21:11:17
IMO, the report is wrong on an essential detail.  It attributes the 
handling barrier to SMTP, which has no such barrier.

Surprisingly, the report is sort of right.  The ABNF in RFC 2821
prohibits dotless domains, although the ABNF in 821 and 5321 allows
them.  This was arguably a mistake in 2821 (it doesn't match the text)
but it says what it says.

     2.  A wide range of independently-developed mail-receiving 
software treats a dotless hostname as /not/ a legal domain name and 
thereby filters it out as potentially hostile.  A common example that 
justifies this is 'localhost'.

No argument there.  And a wide range of mail sending software treats a
dotless domain as a special case, appending search paths and otherwise
modifying it, so sending mail to an address at a dotless domain is an
exercise in flakiness.

There are 19 ccTLDs that have MX records at the top level.  I wonder
if anyone has checked how well mail to them works.  I am particularly
intruigued that Guatemala's and Trinidad's is outsourced to Google.


answer: ai 14391 MX 10 mail.offshore.ai
answer: ax 86392 MX 5 mail.aland.net
answer: cd 86400 MX 5 mail.nic.cd
answer: cf 10800 MX 0 mail.intnet.cf
answer: dm 86400 MX 10 mail.nic.dm
answer: gp 86400 MX 10 ns1.worldsatelliteservices.com
answer: gp 86400 MX 5 ns1.nic.gp
answer: gt 86400 MX 20 alt1.aspmx.l.google.com
answer: gt 86400 MX 20 alt2.aspmx.l.google.com
answer: gt 86400 MX 30 aspmx2.googlemail.com
answer: gt 86400 MX 30 aspmx3.googlemail.com
answer: gt 86400 MX 30 aspmx4.googlemail.com
answer: gt 86400 MX 30 aspmx5.googlemail.com
answer: gt 86400 MX 10 aspmx.l.google.com
answer: hr 14400 MX 5 alpha.carnet.hr
answer: io 604800 MX 10 mailer2.io
answer: kh 10800 MX 10 ns1.dns.net.kh
answer: km 3600 MX 100 mail1.comorestelecom.km
answer: lk 86400 MX 10 malithi-slt.nic.lk
answer: lk 86400 MX 20 malithi-lc.nic.lk
answer: mh 86400 MX 10 imap.pwke.twtelecom.net
answer: mq 86400 MX 10 mx1-mq.mediaserv.net
answer: pa 21600 MX 5 ns.pa
answer: tt 86400 MX 1 aspmx.l.google.com
answer: tt 86400 MX 10 alt1.aspmx.l.google.com
answer: ua 72072 MX 10 mr.kolo.net
answer: va 3600 MX 100 raphaelmx3.posta.va
answer: va 3600 MX 10 raphaelmx1.posta.va
answer: va 3600 MX 10 raphaelmx2.posta.va
answer: ws 21600 MX 10 mail.worldsite.ws

R's,
John

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