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Re: WG Review: Enhancements to Internet email to support diverse service environments (lemonade)

2003-01-29 11:47:59
On 1/29/03 at 6:13 PM +0700, Robert Elz wrote:

A new IETF working group has been proposed in the Applications Area.
[...]
Enhancements to Internet email to support diverse service environments (lemonade)
[...]
2. Enhance the existing IMAP4 message retrieval protocol to satisfy the requirements for streaming playback of multimedia content.

What a horrid idea? How do "streaming playback" and "message retrieval" possibly fit together at all? Is this yet another attempt to pervert a protocol into meeting some other quite unrelated need, for the sole purpose of getting through firewalls or similar?

No, that's not what this means. Actually, it's probably just the opposite of what you fear. For example, let's say you have some data in a message store which is a nice long hunk of sound. Instead of using IMAP to download the entire sound in order to play it, it might be much more intelligent to use an RTSP client to receive the data and play it directly. The envisioned mechanism would make it possible for the client to ask the server, "Can I get this back via RTSP, and if so, where do I connect up?" and the server can tell the client how to retrieve it.

3. Create a message notification protocol for the specific purpose of servers reporting message status information to other servers.

A second #3 ...

A typo.

This one looks more like a proposal for a solution, than a work item. If the solution is already known, a WG isn't needed, just publish it. Otherwise, indicate what problem needs to be solved, for which this might be one solution, and see what alternatives are offered.

The solution is not known. The problem is that there is currently no standard mechanism for mail servers to announce the existence of new mail. Current protocols rely on polling or a constant connection to the mail server. The work item is to come up with a protocol that does notifications. Does the above not describe that work item appropriately?

pr
--
Pete Resnick <mailto:presnick(_at_)qualcomm(_dot_)com>
QUALCOMM Incorporated - Direct phone: (858)651-4478, Fax: (858)651-1102