It already is used by Microsoft. Do a google for +Microsoft +Autodiscover. It is used by Outlook for Windows, Entourage for Mac, the iPhone and Windows Mobile devices. Like you suggested, it uses DNS based on the users email address and looks for a series of resolvable addresses the easiest being autodiscover.domain-name.tld (it has others because of SSL cert flexibility). It uses that address to download an XML file.
The only tricky thing to set it up is that a lot of the documentation out there is dated. It has changed since it was first released and a lot of the documentation on technical blogs, and even on Microsoft's web site are incorrect. Once it's setup, however, it's great. ---- Matthew Huff | One Manhattanville Rd OTA Management LLC | Purchase, NY 10577 http://www.ox.com | Phone: 914-460-4039 aim: matthewbhuff | Fax: 914-460-4139 > -----Original Message----- > From: Frank Bulk [mailto:frnk...@iname.com] > Sent: Monday, June 22, 2009 11:14 AM > To: 'John Levine'; nanog@nanog.org > Subject: RE: Is your ISP blocking outgoing port 25? > > The bootstrap question is addressed by requiring the end-user to know > their > e-mail address and password. Based on the domain name, the > implementation > would reach out to https://something.domain-name.tld and download the > relevant "schema" and data for IMAP, SMTP, POP3, etc, in ordered > priority. > Based on what the e-mail client could support, the desired settings > would be > displayed, and upon end-user approval, applied. This could be leveraged > by > RIM for their BIS, Microsoft/Gmail/etc for smartphones, and for third- > party > webmail hosts such as mail2web.com > > Frank > > -----Original Message----- > From: John Levine [mailto:jo...@iecc.com] > Sent: Monday, June 22, 2009 9:24 AM > To: nanog@nanog.org > Cc: frnk...@iname.com > Subject: Re: Is your ISP blocking outgoing port 25? > > >It's a pity that MAAWG or another group hasn't written a > >specification for the automatic downloading of configuration (with > >certificates, to be sure, for some kind of repudiation) and the > >update thereof, for adoption by the leading consumer e-mail clients. > > MAAWG decided it's not in the standards business, but it does BCPs > pointing at standards elsewhere (mostly the IETF) that it encourages > people to follow. Write a standard that people can use, and I don't > think I'd have much trouble getting them to endorse it. > > It's an interesting design topic, particularly the bootstrap question > of how the client decides where to look for its configuration. A lot > of this stuff is already available via DHCP, but of course a key goal > here is to set config info the last across reboots on different > networks. > > Followup to IETF-something, I suspect. > > R's, > John >
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