Re: Last Call: draft-klensin-rfc2821bis

> >> It seems there are two ways of looking at this:
> >>
> >> (1) AAAA records in the IPv6 world should do exactly same
> >> things as A records in the IPv4 world, so SMTP should look
> >> for an AAAA record in the absence of an MX record, just as A
> >> records are used in the absence of MX records.
> >>
> >> (2) Although some SMTP servers will continue to be found
> >> through A records for legacy reasons, there is no longer a
> >> good reason for any new server not to have a published MX
> >> record.  SMTP clients (senders) will, of course, need to
> >> continue to look up A records, but since there is currently
> >> no significant use of AAAA records for email routing, we
> >> should not perpetuate this legacy in IPv6 as it is in IPv4.
> >...

> > I agree with Jim's characterization and IMHO both positions
> > are  reasonable.
> >
> > I also prefer (2) because I don't think the original "A
> > fallback" was  meant to stay there very long and we just never
> > got around to  deprecating that feature.  If you ask a random
> > sampling of postmasters  and DNS domain owners, I doubt many
> > would even remember right off the  bat that such a fallback
> > exists.

> Based on some small experience with email deployment and
> operations, I believe that you are wrong.

I have to agree.

> Indeed, if you asked
> a random sampling of those groups --remembering that there are a
> huge number of SMTP servers in the world, only a tiny fraction
> of which are professional operations and with an even smaller
> fraction being large-scale, carefully-managed production ones,
> you might discover that many of them had forgotten that there
> was such a thing as an MX record and how to set it up.

And even if they know MX records exist they may not be able to use them. Some
DNS provisioning arrangements allow users to set up MX records but there are
others that do not.

				Ned
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