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E-mail is a reliable transport. Claiming it is not is like claiming that TCP is not a reliable transport, just because extreme packet loss exists, and firewall
by teddyh 4y ago
E-mail is a reliable transport. Claiming it is not is like claiming that TCP is not a reliable transport, just because extreme packet loss exists, and firewalls can play any games they like. Yes they can, but that does not make TCP an unreliable transport.
- dspillett 4y agoI suppose that SMTP can be considered a reliable transport if you trust all MTAs and MUAs to properly implement the specs. But email more generally is certainly not IMO.
- account42 4y agoNothing is a reliable transport if you can't trust the operators to follow the specs. In practice, E-Mail is quite reliable, even in situations where other systems drop messages. For example, you don't need to worry about dropped messages from any downtime of reasonable length (e.g. for system upgrades) because well-behaved MTAs will retry later - this is the entire basis for greylisting.