The current standard for authenticated posting is the AUTH command, coming into support on clients and servers. Note that email posting is now a separate standard (SUBMIT) from email relaying (SMTP) event though their core protocol engine is currently the same.

Being owner of a relatively new ISP/WPP that has just started offering dialup and DSL, I have the luxury of being able to require my customers to use SMTP AUTH without worrying about tons of support calls from users having to switch over. Netscape >= 4.5, Outlook Express >= 4, Outlook >= 98, and the latest versions of Pegasus, Agent and Eudora all support SMTP AUTH. There are just two problems I've run into: Microsoft mail user agents use INETCOMM.DLL to send mail. If you're using version 4.72.3110 of INETCOMM.DLL you will need to upgrade, as 4.72.3110 doesn't authenticate even when the mail server says it accepts authentication. Also, I'm able to use CRAM-MD5 authentication through Pegasus, but I have a beta tester who has had lots of problems, and I haven't pinpointed where the problem actually lies yet. Other than that, SMTP AUTH works well and is not the nasty little hack that POP-before-SMTP is, and is supported much better than XTND XMIT. (And that it's a standard, whereas XTND XMIT isn't. SMTP AUTH is described in RFC2554.) -- North Shore Technologies, Cleveland, OH http://NorthShoreTechnologies.net Steve Sobol, BOFH - President, Chief Website Architect and Janitor Spammers and Net-abusers: Don't bother asking me for service. See http://NorthShoreTechnologies.net/go/policy/ for more information.