Enhanced Mail System Status Codes
RFC 3463
Document | Type |
RFC - Draft Standard
(January 2003; Errata)
Obsoletes RFC 1893
Was draft-vaudreuil-1893bis (individual in app area)
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Author | Gregory Vaudreuil | ||
Last updated | 2015-10-14 | ||
Stream | IETF | ||
Formats | plain text html pdf htmlized bibtex | ||
Stream | WG state | (None) | |
Document shepherd | No shepherd assigned | ||
IESG | IESG state | RFC 3463 (Draft Standard) | |
Consensus Boilerplate | Unknown | ||
Telechat date | |||
Responsible AD | Ned Freed | ||
IESG note | RFCs 3461-3464 published 23-Jan-2003 | ||
Send notices to | (None) |
Network Working Group G. Vaudreuil Request for Comments: 3463 Lucent Technologies Obsoletes: 1893 January 2003 Category: Standards Track Enhanced Mail System Status Codes Status of this Memo This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2003). All Rights Reserved. Abstract This document defines a set of extended status codes for use within the mail system for delivery status reports, tracking, and improved diagnostics. In combination with other information provided in the Delivery Status Notification (DSN) delivery report, these codes facilitate media and language independent rendering of message delivery status. Table of Contents 1. Overview ......................................................2 2. Status Code Structure .........................................3 3. Enumerated Status Codes .......................................5 3.1 Other or Undefined Status ...................................6 3.2 Address Status ..............................................6 3.3 Mailbox Status ..............................................7 3.4 Mail system status ..........................................8 3.5 Network and Routing Status ..................................9 3.6 Mail Delivery Protocol Status ..............................10 3.7 Message Content or Message Media Status ....................11 3.8 Security or Policy Status ..................................12 4. References ...................................................13 5. Security Considerations ......................................13 Appendix A - Collected Status Codes ..........................14 Appendix B - Changes from RFC1893 ............................15 Author's Address .............................................15 Full Copyright Statement .....................................16 Vaudreuil Standards Track [Page 1] RFC 3463 Enhanced Mail System Status Codes January 2003 1. Overview There is a need for a standard mechanism for the reporting of mail system errors richer than the limited set offered by SMTP and the system specific text descriptions sent in mail messages. There is a pressing need for a rich machine-readable, human language independent status code for use in delivery status notifications [DSN]. This document proposes a new set of status codes for this purpose. SMTP [SMTP] error codes have historically been used for reporting mail system errors. Because of limitations in the SMTP code design, these are not suitable for use in delivery status notifications. SMTP provides about 12 useful codes for delivery reports. The majority of the codes are protocol specific response codes such as the 354 response to the SMTP data command. Each of the 12 useful codes are overloaded to indicate several error conditions. SMTP suffers some scars from history, most notably the unfortunate damage to the reply code extension mechanism by uncontrolled use. This proposal facilitates future extensibility by requiring the client to interpret unknown error codes according to the theory of codes while requiring servers to register new response codes. The SMTP theory of reply codes are partitioned in the number space in such a manner that the remaining available codes will not provide the space needed. The most critical example is the existence of only 5 remaining codes for mail system errors. The mail system classification includes both host and mailbox error conditions. The remaining third digit space would be completely consumed as needed to indicate MIME and media conversion errors and security system errors. A revision to the SMTP theory of reply codes to better distribute the error conditions in the number space will necessarily be incompatible with SMTP. Further, consumption of the remaining reply-code number space for delivery notification reporting will reduce the available codes for new ESMTP extensions. The following status code set is based on the SMTP theory of reply codes. It adopts the success, permanent error, and transient error semantics of the first value, with a further description and classification in the second. This proposal re-distributes the classifications to better distribute the error conditions, such as separating mailbox from host errors.Show full document text