Technical Summary
This document is a specification of the basic protocol for Internet
electronic mail transport. It (including text carried forward from
RFC 5321) consolidates, updates, and clarifies several previous
documents, making all or parts of most of them obsolete. It covers
the SMTP extension mechanisms and best practices for the contemporary
Internet, but does not provide details about particular extensions.
The document also provides information about use of SMTP for other
than strict mail transport and delivery. This document replaces RFC
5321, the earlier version with the same title, and supersedes RFCs
1846, 7504, and 7505, incorporating all the relevant information in
them.
Working Group Summary
The EMAILCORE working group’s charter was to perform a "limited review and
revision" of documents that describe a widely installed and used protocol.
Participation in the working group was generally limited to a
dozen or so individuals, owing in large part to the group’s work being
focused on revising fifteen year old documents that are themselves
fourth-generation revisions of originals first published in 1982.
When reviewing this document, it is strongly suggested that you refer to:
https://author-tools.ietf.org/iddiff?url1=rfc5321&url2=draft-ietf-emailcore-rfc5321bis
Progress through the WG was sometimes slow and occasionally contentious,
but consensus was reached on all such issues. The document is ready to proceed.
There is a fair amount of leftover editorial material in the form of comments
that will be deleted before publication, to provide reviewers with background that
may be useful prior to preparing the to-be-published version.
Document Quality
SMTP is ubiquitous. There are intentionally no breaking changes to the
deployed base; this document refines and clarifies a number of things and
resolves errata, finally advancing SMTP to full standard.
No reviews are required that have not already been scheduled
and completed.
Personnel
The Document Shepherd for this document is Alexey Melnikov. The
Responsible Area Director is Murray Kucherawy.
RFC Editor Note:
Please create a cluster to include this document as well as
draft-ietf-emailcore-rfc5322bis and draft-ietf-emailcore-as.