On Wed, Feb 11, 2004 at 09:21:10PM +0000, Shevek wrote:
| On Wed, 11 Feb 2004, wayne wrote:
|
| > First, I actually went and checked and according to RFC2821, the local
| > part *MAY* be case sensitive, so technically, MTAs can't change the
| > case, but I think we can't assume this. So, I think base64 encoding
| > is out, and base36 is probably pretty reasonable.
|
| If we use base64, but allow case insensitive matching on the hash, then we
| are effectively base36 with an option to enforce full case insensitivity
| if there isn't a problem. Furthermore, we get to use standard base64 code
| (which is in everything). We'd have to write our own base36 code, and the
| less code in a product, the better, especially in a security-oriented
| product.
I think we can assume the majority of MTAs will be case sensitive in the
localpart.
| So far, only one device is known which has trouble with >64 byte local
| parts, and that's the Cisco PIX MailGuard feature. Since PIXs are
| notoriously broken anyway, I'm not inclined to panic.
Similarly, we can go over 64 for the majority of MTAs.
I believe it is safe for SRS to make those assumptions, both in the code
and in the spec. We can disregard the small population of nonconformant
implementations.