----- Original Message -----
From: "John C Klensin" <john-ietf(_at_)jck(_dot_)com>
To: "Franck Martin" <franck(_at_)sopac(_dot_)org>; <ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org>
Cc: <postfix-users(_at_)postfix(_dot_)org>
Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 12:11 AM
Subject: Re: SMTP compressed protocol...
p.s. Don't you know you aren't supposed to raise technical
issues on the IETF list? It might drop the noise to signal
ratio below infinity, which many of those who seem to post the
most messages to the list might find very disappointing. :-(
John can always count on me ... (heh, heh, heh)
This is actually a nice discussion (people thinking about how to make
the world a better place, other people remembering what was talked
about in the past while being realistic about whether things have
changed enough to make different decisions reasonable). I would have
thought a reasonable discussion would be *more* disaappointing than a
falling noise to signal ratio, based on the last week or so of
traffic.
Having said this, it seems to me that the people who are most likely
to care about mail compression are at the extremes - either people who
are working with what I consider extremely large files (as short as
the Problem Statement working group meeting was in Minneapolis, it
recorded as about 220 MB of MPEG1 audio/video), or working with
extremely slow/high latency access links (almost always wireless).
The people who are working with extremely large files have the most
reason to compress before transmission, including the part where mail
quotas are enforced before/after transmission, so that's the size that
really matters.
The people who are working with what PILC called either "lossy" or
"lousy" links (I believe this was a Vern Paxson Freudian slip)
probably do more with POP3 or IMAP4 than with SMTP (there are people
on this list who seem to send more e-mail than they receive, but I
don't think that's the general case!), so any compressing solution for
sending mail would need to think in terms of receiving mail as well.
This is probably why we seem to handle these links with per-hop
compression, rather than anything end-to-end.
But it is nice to see discussions like this taking place.
Now I can go back to installing a root server on my laptop for all of
North America (in other words, back to business as usual!)
Spencer