Re: Last Call: SMTP Message Submission to Proposed Standard

[Dave Crocker <[e-mail]>]

At 11:41 AM 5/11/98 -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
>You know, somehow I've been surviving with SMTP for this for years,
>and it works well for myself and my users. I really am not certain why 
>this sudden critical need has arrived. Perhaps the hundreds of
>thousands of people using SMTP for this purpose are mistaken and only
>*think* it works.

The need is not "sudden".  The topic was under discussion for quite awhile,
as in a couple/few years.  

The need HAS been made MORE urgent by the onset of spam problems and the
need to treat submission markedly different from relaying.

You know, the Arpanet went 10 years without a special posting protocol for
mail, instead using an adjunct command for file transfer.  But the net
grows and demands change.  So we created SMTP.  

It's now time to create a distinct posting service and to create it as
simply as possible.  Instantiating SMTP on a separate port and with some
very explicit statements about the strictures at the server, distinguishing
relay processing from submission processing, is the easiest way for us to
accomplish this.

d/

_________________________________________________________________________
Dave Crocker                Brandenburg Consulting        [phone]
[e-mail]      675 Spruce Drive        (f) [phone]
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