Re: virtual hosting

[Keith Moore <moore@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> One thing that is not clear to me is how the mail submission
> protocol will handle virtual hosting. This is a very popular method
> for small businesses to establish an Internet presence and should be
> supported.

If the submit protocol doesn't rewrite headers, it's not a problem.

IMHO, it's a Very Bad Idea to specify that the submit protocol should
"fix up" header addresses.  If the user agent doesn't know the correct
return address, the submit protocol server shouldn't be guessing on
its behalf.  The submit server certainly shouldn't be rewriting
addresses that already have FQDNs.

What we really need is a standard way for UAs to determine their
default configuration from the local site.  (of course, the site
configuration could still be overriden by the UA when necessary).

The submit protocol is still useful, but it should be used to detect
UA configuration errors and notify the appropriate parties.  That will
help ensure that the broken UAs get fixed.

Keith

p.s. Of course, people with existing UAs that don't support a new
configuration method, are still going to want a way to do address
fixup.  And they're going to want to use smtp submit for this purpose.
But this shouldn't be the standard behavior, nor should it be the
default behavior for a submit server.