Re: [Asrg] [ASRG] SMTP pull anyone?

John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> Mon, 17 August 2009 13:04 UTC

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Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:03:57 -0000
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From: John Levine <johnl@taugh.com>
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Subject: Re: [Asrg] [ASRG] SMTP pull anyone?
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> By allowing the system to cut most of the spam through a simple pull
> mechanism, compares very well against today's anti-spam software
> model, which not all can afford.

I gather that you are proposing a system in which mail from a particular
domain can only be offered from servers that are somehow authorized by
or related to that domain.  If so, that is a huge change to the SMTP
store-and-forward model.

The predecessor to SMTP was a hack layered on FTP which only worked if
the sender and recipient systems were both online at the same time
and could talk directly to each other.  SMTP store-and-forward
was a big advance over that a lot of real useful mail systems depend
on being able to deliver mail in multiple stages.

If your idea is that mail from foo.com can only come from a foo.com
server or something like that, you might want to explain how your
proposal differs from RSS, and particularly from the model in the
Tumbleweed patent.

R's,
John

PS:

>I guess we are expecting a magic solution that will stop all the spam in a
>single go and would not require us from changing our system continuosly.

No we are not, and I have to say that's not a very useful line of argument.