On Thu, Sep 07, 2000 at 04:03:29PM -0400, Dave Sill wrote:
> >RFC 974 January 1986
> >Mail Routing and the Domain System
> >
> > It is possible that the list of MXs in the response to the query will
> > be empty. This is a special case. If the list is empty, mailers
> > should treat it as if it contained one RR, an MX RR with a preference
> ~~~~~~
> > value of 0, and a host name of REMOTE.
> >
> >Thanks for playing.
>
> The RFC says "should" not "must" or "MUST", so Jost is correct: the
> RFC's don't *demand* it.
>
> But, again, in practice, mailers do treat empty MX's in the way the
> RFC suggests. At least, I'm not aware of any that don't.
The author uses "should" in this fashion all through the document -- I am
inclined to believe that he intends it to be more of an imperative and less
of a suggestion.
adam@beetlejuice:~$ grep should rfc974.txt | wc -l
29
adam@beetlejuice:~$ grep must rfc974.txt | wc -l
5
As an aside, I've been running flounder.net without an MX for 3 years now,
and to my knowledge, I have never had a problem receiving mail from hotmail
or any other source.
--Adam
