Re: [ietf-smtp] Endless debate on IP literals

["John R Levine" <[e-mail]>]

In article <[e-mail]>,
Dave Crocker  <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
>> With respect to all of the low performance IoT devices mailing out
>> status reports, that's submission, not SMTP.
>...
>> We definitely need to make it clear in 5321bis that submission and
>> SMTP are different
>+1
>
>Hence, Item 2 of the items list that I posted.

I think it's stronger than your item 2.  Even if your mail sending
setup does some MTA-like things, e.g., relay messages from somewhere
else, if it can't act like a fully capable MTA, it's doing submission
and needs to relay mail through a fully capable MTA.

I'm thinking, for example, of DMA (Dragonfly Mail Agent), a small
almost MTA that I use on my small server boxes.  Even though DMA can
technically do all the things that 5321 says an MTA is supposed to do,
I have it configured to relay everything to the submission server on
my real MTA rather than trying to send mail directly.

The definition of a fully capable MTA is circular -- it's an MTA that
does the things that persaude other MTAs that it's a real MTA.  There
are no doubt people who will find that unacceptably vague, but that's
life.

R's,
John