Re: smtp charter (revised)

[ljm@xxxxxxx (leo j mclaughlin iii)]

>>     The SMTP extensions working group is chartered to develop
>>     extensions to the base SMTP protocol (RFC821) to facilitate the
>>     more effecient transmission of 8 bit and binary data....
>
>...I want to very seriously propose that my suggestion in a previous
>message about creating a totally new 3rd mail transfer protocol should
>not be ruled out in the charter....
>
>I believe that this new MTS protocol should have its own new TCP Port
>Number, and might just as well then solve the full-binary problem too,
>and use the FTP-like facility of opening a second data connection to
>transfer the message content.
>
>Why not really do it right, instead of dragging the whole SMTP bunch
>of baggage along with it?
>

I can't agree strongly enough. I view the purpose of the 822 group
to be one of kludgeing together a solution to allow the transmission
of arbitrary messages while we are still using the existing 7-bit,
line length limited mail transport mechanisms.

The purpose of this group, however, is to build a proper binary mail
transport mechanism.  It may be FTP-like -- it may in fact be FTP with
a new well known account rather like 'anonymous' and the appropriate
message forwarding code added to the servers.  In any case, most of
the MTA/UA vendors I have spoken with really would rather build binary
data stream based mail systems and just surround the 7-bit SMTP world
with newstyle-822 gateways.

enjoy,
leo j mclaughlin iii
ljm@ftp.com