On 30-Mar-2009, at 11:52, Rik wrote:
The MAIL RFC's were conceives a long time ago and have had some changes.
The changes (RFC2822) did not change enough. What is really needed is SoSMTP (Son of SMTP) defined for port 26. It would be 8bit compatible and would NOT be backward compatible with current SMTP. It would not have folding of headers lines and it would have exact standards on every header (the precise format of every date, for example). Any message that failed to be to the standards would be rejected for transfer on port 26. Of course, it would require a valid SASL chain on all servers from source to destination.
Mail MTAs like postfix would then be able to first try port 26, and then only if that fails to connect, would they 'fall back' to port 25.
Eventually as people saw that ALL the spam came in on port 25, they would be motivated to change over.
Sure - the mail system is not ideal - however, with no RFC's we would end up with closed, stupid proprietary systems that don't talk.
I'm a big fan of RFCs, but the state of email right now is a massive problem, and the various RFCs are a large part of the reason.
-- I AM ZOMBOR! (kelly) ZOMBOR!
