Re: [art] Auto-configuring Email Clients via WebFinger

"Paul E. Jones" <paulej@packetizer.com> Tue, 16 July 2019 17:32 UTC

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From: "Paul E. Jones" <paulej@packetizer.com>
To: Bron Gondwana <brong@fastmail.fm>, "art@ietf.org" <art@ietf.org>
Cc: Marten Gajda <marten@dmfs.org>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2019 17:31:57 +0000
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Subject: Re: [art] Auto-configuring Email Clients via WebFinger
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Agreed.  These things should all be automated.

------ Original Message ------
From: "Bron Gondwana" <brong@fastmail.fm>
To: "art@ietf.org" <art@ietf.org>
Cc: "Marten Gajda" <marten@dmfs.org>
Sent: 7/16/2019 1:22:56 AM
Subject: Re: [art] Auto-configuring Email Clients via WebFinger

>On Tue, Jul 16, 2019, at 05:31, Paul E. Jones wrote:
>>ART folks,
>>
>>Several years ago when I was working on WebFinger, one of the use 
>>cases I presented was using WebFinger to facilitate auto-configuring 
>>email clients.  It was and still is a problem I deal with today.
>>
>>For my own family, I have to manually configure several different 
>>clients on several different platforms for each member of the family.  
>>It's time consuming and really needs to be made simpler.
>>
>>My wife also has to deal with this issue where she works, because her 
>>company, while just 100 or so employees, has offices in two different 
>>countries and the mail server settings an employee uses depends on his 
>>or her geographic location.  To use standard IETF protocols, it means 
>>a lot of manual provisioning.
>>
>>I see the same sort of challenges with service providers. If one wants 
>>to have his or her own domain, but isn't technically savvy, they're in 
>>for a lot of "fun" trying to figure out the various settings. 
>>Seriously, no normal person should have to understand what SMTP or 
>>IMAP means, and definitely what port numbers or security settings to 
>>fill in.
>>
>>While there has been a generic DNS-based method for email provision 
>>for a while, it doesn't work for me. It doesn't work for my wife's 
>>company, either. It also doesn't define everything one might need to 
>>define (e.g., required security settings or policies).
>>
>>So we put together a very simple example to show how this might be 
>>done with WebFinger.  See the draft here:
>>https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-jones-webfinger-email-autoconfig-00
>
>There's also been discussion about doing the same thing for caldav and 
>carddav in CalConnect, which was led by Marten. It would be good to 
>combine this work!
>
>Cheers,
>
>Bron.
>
>--
>   Bron Gondwana
>   brong@fastmail.fm
>
>