Document Action: 'Tunneling of SMTP Message Transfer Priorities' to Informational RFC (draft-melnikov-smtp-priority-tunneling-04.txt)

[The IESG <[e-mail]>]

The IESG has approved the following document:
- 'Tunneling of SMTP Message Transfer Priorities'
  (draft-melnikov-smtp-priority-tunneling-04.txt) as Informational RFC

This document has been reviewed in the IETF but is not the product of an
IETF Working Group.

The IESG contact person is Pete Resnick.

A URL of this Internet Draft is:
http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-melnikov-smtp-priority-tunneling/




Technical Summary 

  This defines a mechanism for tunneling of SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer
  Protocol) Message Transfer Priority values through MTAs (Message
  Transfer Agents) that don't support the MT-PRIORITY SMTP extension.

Working Group Summary 

  There are currently no appropriate email-related working groups.  The
  ADs and AppsAWG chairs considered the document for the Apps Area WG,
  but decided that it would be done best as an individual submission,
  and did not need the attention of the working group.

Document Quality 

  There is at least one prototype implementation, and plans for at least
  one other after publication.  This is largely being done for a
  particular use case, and the proponents are aware of some of the
  tradeoffs they've made.  The shepherd has some concern about the
  broader applicability of this as a standard, given those trade-offs.
  That said, some of them had to be made, and there is value in
  implementing features from proprietary email systems in standardized
  ways on the open Internet.  The shepherd supports that general effort.

Personnel 

  Barry Leiba is the document shepherd
  Pete Resnick is the Responsible AD.

RFC Editor note:

Please make the following change to the Introduction:

OLD:
   This document is an experimental extension to the SMTP Message
   Transfer Priorities extension [SMTP-PRIORITY].  It specifies
   application layer tunneling of message priority, to convey the
   priority of the messages through Message Transfer Agents (MTAs) that
   do not support the Message Transfer Priorities extension.  The
   tunneling is done by adding a new message header field to Internet
   message format specified in [RFC5322].

NEW:
   The SMTP Message Transfer Priorities extension [SMTP-PRIORITY]
   specifies a mechanism to allow messages to be given a label to
   indicate preferential handling, to enable mail handling nodes to take
   this into account for onward processing. However, as with all SMTP
   extensions, all SMTP Message Transfer Agents (MTAs) between the
   source and the destination must support the extension in order for it
   to be successfully used. This document describes an application layer
   tunneling of message priority, to convey the priority of the messages
   through Message Transfer Agents (MTAs) that do not support the
   Message Transfer Priorities extension.  The tunneling is done by
   adding a new message header field to Internet message format
   specified in [RFC5322].