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Not addressed by the article is SMTP. Is there still a need for store-and-forward in the modern internet? I think that a lot of the current headaches with mail
by whoopdedo 2y ago
Not addressed by the article is SMTP. Is there still a need for store-and-forward in the modern internet? I think that a lot of the current headaches with mail management are because receivers bear the cost. It made sense at a time when availability wasn't guaranteed. But server uptime now is much higher than it was in 1982. And although the original plan for email was that any machine could send a message to any other machine, it has since evolved into endpoints only ever connecting to a designated server. Rather than that server having to push all mail content around, it could hold the messages and post notifications to the destination, then release only after delivery has been accepted.
- warkdarrior 2y agoThis is just a convoluted way to arrive at the core problem: how does the recipient machine decide to accept a message delivery?
- giantrobot 2y ago> It made sense at a time when availability wasn't guaranteed. It still isn't guaranteed. There's any number of reasons two MTAs can't talk to one another. Then there's more reasons an MTA can't talk to an MDA. > Rather than that server having to push all mail content around, it could hold the messages and post notifications to the destination, then release only after delivery has been accepted. IIRC this was one of the ideas behind Internet Mail 2000[0]. The open questions on that page are actually pretty good arguments against such a system. Not that e-mail is perfect but an open message sending system has a lot of important details to get right to work properly. [0] http://cr.yp.to/im2000.html http://cr.yp.to/im2000.html