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)
|
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Last updated | 2015-10-14 | ||
| Stream | IETF | ||
| Formats | plain text pdf html 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
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