I look forward to your paper on "the end to end concept, and why it doesn't apply to email" ;)
I think the problem here is that people invoke something they think of as 'the end-to-end principle', but actually isn't. from <http://web.mit.edu/Saltzer/www/publications/endtoend/ endtoend.pdf>: ----- . . . functions placed at low levels of a system may be redundant or of little value when compared with the cost of providing them at that low level. ----- *That* is the actual 'end-to-end principle'. The imposition of hierarchy in application-layer email routing (or DNS infrastructure, etc.) has nothing to do with the actual end-to-end principle, except as a good example of honoring it. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Roland Dobbins <rdobbins@cisco.com> // 408.527.6376 voice The telephone demands complete participation. -- Marshall McLuhan