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

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

> On Jan 3, 2020, at 12:43 AM, Ned Freed <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
>>  If you can be sure that your
>> network doesn't do that, at least for its internal traffic, port 25
>> submission works fine.
> 
> And others have stringent security policies against mail being sent to any port
> other than 25.

Well, we could recommend against such policies, and also recommend that devices use a different default port for submission.  But it’s probably the case that some sites will still find it easier to override the default and use port 25 than to get silly security policies changed.   

And I expect what that means is that a mail relayer can’t tell by the port used whether to act as an MSA or an MTA.  So sites might need to provision and configure separate services on different IP addresses.  That’s easier than it used to be with virtual machines being common now,  but could still run afoul of IT in many organizations.   Anyway I guess we just make the best recommendations we can with the knowledge that there will be deviations that equipment and software must be configurable to deal with.  Perhaps things will converge over time.

> Getting hung up on which port does what isn't helpful. The goal should be
> to figure out the actual characteristics of the services that are needed.

Yeah it doesn’t matter which port but I do think it would help to further encourage a separation of function between submission and relaying.

Keith