Protocol Action: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol to Proposed Standard

[The IESG <[e-mail]>]

The IESG has approved the Internet-Draft 'Simple Mail Transfer
Protocol' <draft-ietf-drums-smtpupd-13.txt> as a Proposed Standard.
This document is the product of the Detailed Revision/Update of Message
Standards Working Group.  The IESG contact persons are Ned Freed and
Patrik Faltstrom.


Technical Summary
 
This document is a self-contained specification of the basic protocol for
the Internet electronic mail transport, consolidating and updating:

  - the original SMTP specification of RFC 821,
  - domain name system requirements and implications for mail
    transport from RFC 1035 and RFC 974,
  - the clarifications and applicability statements in RFC 1123, and
  - material drawn from the SMTP Extension mechanisms.

It replaces RFC 821, RFC 974, and the mail transport materials of RFC
1123.

Working Group Summary

The discussions in the wg has been going on for many years. The need
for updating RFC 821 and consolidating the text in various other RFCs
was identified around 1992, and the discussions have been going on
basically since then.

Most of the discussions were around unclear statements in earlier
RFC's and in many cases the resulting text is a mixture between the
understanding of the original text and functionality implemented in
existing email software.

The document is not correcting identified "errors" in the original
design of the SMTP protocol.

Protocol Quality

The document is reviewed by Patrik Faltstrom.


Notes to the RFC-Editor:


(1) Please remove section X

(2) Please see that section Z get a correct "number"

(3) Please verify references 11 (not 12 as mentioned in section X.2) and 32

(4) Please change first paragraph of the Abstract (section 0) as follows:

From:

This document is a self-contained specification of the basic protocol for
the Internet electronic mail transport, consolidating and updating:

To:

This document is a self-contained specification of the basic protocol for
the Internet electronic mail transport. It consolidates, updates and
clarifies, but doesn't add new or change existing functionality of
the following:

(5) Please change the term "replace" in the first sentence of the second
paragraph of the Abstract (section 0) as follows:

From:

It replaces RFC 821, RFC 974, and the mail transport materials of RFC
1123.

To:

It obsoletes RFC 821, RFC 974, and updates RFC 1123 (replaces the
mail transport materials of RFC 1123).