Todd Vierling wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jun 2005, Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com wrote:
The proponents of "email peering" typically want to switch from the current model (millions of independant email servers) to a different model, with only a few big actors.
I don't know who these proponents are, that you refer to. However, in my earlier message I quite clearly described a model that allows for millions of independent email servers organized in roughly 3 levels of hierarchy and I described how it could be done so that email peering IS NOT LIMITED to a few big actors.
You mean like ucbvax? (If you don't know what that means, you have no business talking about Internet e-mail.)
Seriously, the mess you're proposing was already done. It didn't scale.
I think the salient point is that BGP itself does not and would not scale to the same level of demand SMTP peering agreements would need. Currently 160k prefixes and 16bit ASNs -- while in and of itself stretching many operators scaliability limits -- come nowhere close to millions of domain names, mailsystems, mail orgs, mail users and pieces of mail. Aggregation is currently failing for BGP, there is no rational basis to assume it could even begin to make traction for SMTP. Its a pipe dream.