On Fri, 17 Jun 2005 Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com wrote:
Similar concept, same scaling problems; it just hides the explicit routing from the user (as would any modern "peering" system, presumably).
Then you are presuming wrongly. Nowhere in what I wrote have I suggested any changes in the existing email technology. I am not suggesting that we drop SMTP in favour of your favourite old dusty protocol. I am suggesting that we need a system of accountability for people who run Internet email servers based on contracts and SLAs, i.e. peering agreements.
From domain, for example by MX record or by reverse DNS (we implemented
In between the choice of accepting mail from *anybody* by default which we have now and the choice of accepting mail from *nobody* by default that explicit peering agreements represents there is another solution; which is to accept mail only from IPs that have *some relation* to the sender's that test and call it MX+). Here is a downloadable reference implementation for use with procmail: http://mxplus.org/ The example program mxplus is code that was carved out of the mail server software we use and made standalone. It's an antispam option that works well for many users. The example includes sender email address validation, which is another test like MX+ that works well for most users and breaks under usually acceptable circumstances when senders do bad things like send email with an invalid From address. YMMV. Mike. +----------------- H U R R I C A N E - E L E C T R I C -----------------+ | Mike Leber Direct Internet Connections Voice 510 580 4100 | | Hurricane Electric Web Hosting Colocation Fax 510 580 4151 | | mleber@he.net http://www.he.net | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+