SMTP is definitely not a p2p protocol in most corporate environments. In ours, all email (even ones that you would think should be host2host) go to a central "smarthost" that processes the mail, and archive it for compliance. All internal to external and external to internal email is tightly controlled and only goes through a very specific route. Again, big difference between a univerisity or ISP environment and a corporate one.
-----Original Message----- From: Matthew Palmer [mailto:mpalmer@hezmatt.org] Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2011 4:00 PM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: quietly....
On Thu, Feb 03, 2011 at 03:20:25PM -0500, Lamar Owen wrote:
On Thursday, February 03, 2011 02:28:32 pm Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
The only reason FTP works through a NAT is because the NAT has already been hacked up to further mangle the data stream to make up for the mangling it does.
FTP is a in essence a peer-to-peer protocol, as both ends initiate TCP streams. I know that's nitpicking, but it is true.
So is SMTP, by the same token. Aptly demonstrating why the term "P2P" is so mind-alteringly stupid.
- Matt