Technical Summary
Email has become a popular distribution service for a variety of
socially unacceptable, mass-effect purposes. The most obvious ones include
spam and worms. This note recommends conventions for the operation of
email submission and transport services between independent operators,
suchas enterprises and Internet Service Providers. Its goal is to improve
lines of accountability for controlling abusive uses of the Internet mail
service.
Consequently the document offers recommendations for constructive
operational policies between independent operators of email transmission
services.
With the recent advent of email authentication technologies aimed at
providing assurances and traceability between internetworked networks,
the authors recognized that the initial submission of a message became the
weakest link. Consequently, the document offers recommendations for
constructive operational policies for the first step of email sending,
the submission (or posting) of email into the transmission network.
Relaying and delivery entail policies that occur subsequent to submission
and are outside the scope of this document.
Working Group Summary
Although formally an Independent submission, the document authors
represent extensive email technical and operations experience and have
extensively circulated successive versions of the draft among the Internet
mail technical and operations communities. The document has synthesized
that considerable body of review.
Protocol Quality
The document has been extensively reviewed and has received positive
feedback as being a useful contribution to the body of Internet Mail
practices documents. It underwent two IETF Last Calls in 2005 and 2007
and was reviewed by Bert Wijnen and Dan Romascanu for the IESG and by
Marshall Rose and Rand Wacker for the APPS Area.
Note to RFC Editor
RFC Editor, please make the following edits before publication:
1. In the Abstract section delete:
'The document seeks BCP status. Comments and discussion of this document
should be addressed to the ietf-smtp@imc.org mailing list.'
2. In the Introduction section:
OLD:
They have had varying effect and vastly different impacts on users and
on the Internet mail infrastructure.
NEW:
The results have been mixed, at best.
3. Section 3.2
OLD:
The ordering of that list SHOULD try the SUBMISSION port 587 first.
NEW:
The SUBMISSION port 587 SHOULD be placed first in the list.
4. Section 6 title
OLD:
6. Consideration
NEW:
6. Considerations