IETF email infrastructure transition reminder

[Dane Foster <[e-mail]>]

A new modern, modular, and containerized infrastructure for email services provided for ietf.org, iab.org, irtf.org, rfc-editor.org (including email lists) is scheduled to be put in place starting at 22:00 UTC on 11 September 2026.

During the transition, email may be delayed by up to 60 minutes. The web interface to the mailing list software (Mailman3) will also be unavailable during the transition; Mailarchive, and IMAP access will be unaffected. 

The new email infrastructure includes a complete refactoring of postconfirm, which is an open-source mail filter (milter) and processing tool that acts as a mail gatekeeper, preventing nuisance traffic and handling first-time sender verifications via email-based challenge-response. 

The new software takes a modular approach to these functions, moving to a new spam detection software (from spamassasin to rspamd), and improving certificate and TLS handling for DANE (DNS-based Authentication of Named Entities). 

The result will be better email hygiene: improved bounce handling, reduced spam opportunities, and removing a possibility to serve as an open relay.

A blog post with further technical details:
https://www.ietf.org/blog/email-service-tranistion-2026-09

Longer term, the new infrastructure will be more robust and scalable, and easier to maintain and upgrade in the future. The email processing software and infrastructure in use today has grown over many years to be extremely complicated and difficult to operate and update. Email is key to work in the IETF and this update provides a solid foundation for future improvements.

More generally, the email services transition is part of the multi-year effort to update the entire IT infrastructure supporting the IETF. This update to email services is a necessary step to enable IETF participants more integrated management of mailing list subscriptions and through the IETF Datatracker. All of the new software is available on ietf-tools Github repository. [1] 

[1] https://github.com/ietf-tools