I am using the Perl reference implementation from the pobox site. A couple
questions:
1) The following is my understanding of what the various statuses mean:
fail - sender domain provides explicit list of valid sender domains,
and client IP does not match
softfail - same as fail, but sender domain allows for possibility of
other valid sender IPs
neutral - sender domain publishes SPF records, but has a policy not to block -
policy should be same as none
unknown - permanent failure while resolving SPF DNS records for sender domain
error - temporary failure while resolving SPF DNS records for sender
domain
none - domain of MAIL FROM does not designate permitted sender hosts
(i.e., DNS record but no SPF record)
pass - client IP is a designated mailer for domain of MAIL FROM
In the testing I've done so far, about half the messages result in a response
of "neutral" and none have resulted in "none". This seems backwards from what
I would expect given the explanations above. I get the following explanation
via the "SMTP comment" URL returned for "neutral":
http://spf.pobox.com/why.html?sender=cusdlutca%40mailcity.com&ip=24.11.44.178&receiver=scanner.zixworkslab.zixcorp.com
Again, that sounds more like "none" than "neutral". Do I have something
backward, or is the Perl module errant?
2) The module takes both a HELO and MAIL FROM argument. Does it do anything
with the HELO domain? Is it used only if the MAIL FROM is empty?
Thanks,
Philip