Subject: RE: Message-ID (was: RE: Take 2: References/In-Reply-To replaceme nt text)

From: "Larry Osterman (Exchange)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Jun 1999 15:59:02 -0700

> With all due respect to you as an individual, Larry, that's
> Microsoft's own darn fault and a direct result of hubris,
> incompetence, ignorance, or perhaps some combination thereof.
> Especially before 1995, Microsoft has not enjoyed the reputation of an

Actually the requirement of stupid IP addresses was imposed by our
networking vendor (which was Ungermann-Bass at the time, if you care), not
"Microsoft", and was imposed in 1989 when we started deploying TCP/IP out on
our corporate network.  It had nothing to do with corporat hubris, and
everything to do with the decisions made by the network administrators.  We
got rid of the requirement in 1994 when we finally rolled out our proxy
servers.

And you're blissfully ignoring my entire premise - that 822bis email
messages have a scope far greater than the existant DNS, and to ignore
private networks is sheer folly.  Requiring a FQDN in the RHS of message-id
will not completely solve the message-id uniqueness problem, and it
precludes deployment of 822bis message ID generators on private networks.  

It is my claim that this is EXACTLY the reason that 2119 has a
"SHOULD"/"MUST" differentiation.  There are situations where a non FQDN may
in fact be required as long as the entire message-id is unique.

I think it's time to close this discussion down.  Can we have a straw-poll?
Is there enough support for Matt/Brad's belief that DRUMS should modify the
RFC822 message-id grammer as follows:

     optional-field =
                 /  "Message-ID"        ":"   msg-id

     msg-id      =  "<" msg-addr-spec ">"        ; Unique message id

     msg-addr-spec   =  local-part "@" fully-qualified-domain        ;
global address

     local-part  =  word *("." word)             ; uninterpreted
                                                 ; case-preserved

     fully-qualified-domain =  sub-domain 1*("." sub-domain)

     sub-domain  =  domain-ref

     domain-ref  =  atom                         ; symbolic reference

Or should we leave the existing 822bis behavior alone (with the caveats
already present)?

Clearly I favor the latter, how do other particpants feel?

Larry Osterman
Sent from larryo-laptop.dns.microsoft.com running NT5 and Outlook 2000
and Exchange Server 5.5.  Please notify the sender of any difficulties

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Matt Curtin [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Tuesday, June 01, 1999 3:09 PM
> To: Larry Osterman (Exchange)
> Cc: 'Robert Elz'; Pete Resnick; DRUMS
> Subject: RE: Message-ID (was: RE: Take 2: References/In-Reply-To
> replaceme nt text)
> 
> 
> >>>>> On Tue, 1 Jun 1999 14:36:24 -0700 ,
>       "Larry Osterman (Exchange)" 
> <[email-masked]> said:
> 
> Larry> The cases where it is a bad idea are really simple - requiring
> Larry> FQDNs precludes deploying an 822bis message generation
> Larry> algorithm on a network with a flat name space.
> 
> Ah, this is definitely the point of disagreement.
> 
> Larry> While TCP/IP is certainly the
> Larry> dominant networking protocol deployed today, and DNS is the
> Larry> dominant naming hierarchy, it is far from the ONLY one
> Larry> deployed.
> 
> Well, it's the ONLY one deployed on the Internet and DNS will remain
> _the_ naming hierarchy for the forseeable future.
> 
> As this is an Internet standard that we're attempting to draft, that's
> all that really matters.
> 
> Larry> Even if TCP/IP and DNS ARE deployed, there is no guarantee that
> Larry> the DNS deployed in a company be the same as the DNS deployed
> Larry> OUTSIDE the company.
> 
> Irrelevant.  (Humor me a moment; I'll explain myself below.)
> 
> Larry> As an example, for many years (pre-1994),
> Larry> Microsoft's internal DNS purposely conflicted with the external
> Larry> DNSs (the reasons for this are obscure and had to do with the
> Larry> way our firewalls were configured, we also used class A IP
> Larry> addresses that were deliberately in conflict with external IP
> Larry> addresses).  This meant that it was entirely possible for a
> Larry> FQDN generated inside Microsoft's firewall would conflict with
> Larry> a FQDN generated OUTSIDE the Microsoft firewall, since there
> Larry> was no communication between the two naming systems.  In such a
> Larry> configuration, the use of a FQDN is potentially assertively
> Larry> harmful.
> 
> With all due respect to you as an individual, Larry, that's
> Microsoft's own darn fault and a direct result of hubris,
> incompetence, ignorance, or perhaps some combination thereof.
> Especially before 1995, Microsoft has not enjoyed the reputation of an
> Internet-friendly or especially clueful organization.  At that time,
> your colleagues were running around promoting "good enough software",
> claiming that MSN was the only network that would matter, and propping
> up Bill Gates to say things like "the Internet is the frothiest thing
> I've ever seen".  Microsoft's corporate misconfiguration is not of
> interest to the Internet community.
> 
> Now, above I boldly claimed that a company's internal networks and
> naming schemes are irrelevant to the problem of Message-ID generation.
> The reason I assert this so confidently is because there is already a
> need to provide a globally-unique, DNS-dependent identifier for mail
> to work, that is the user's address.  So it isn't like there isn't a
> globally-unique domain that an MUA can't recognize as its own.
> 
> If the sender's address isn't world-unique, then there are bigger
> problems at hand, and/or that mail isn't going over the Internet, in
> which case it's of very little interest in Internet Engineering Task
> Force documentation.
> 
> I say again, RHS "MUST" be an FQDN.
> 
> (You and I might not be able to reach an agreement here so it might be
> best to see what others have to say and see whether there is 
> consensus 
> in either the case of MUST or SHOULD.)
> 
> -- 
> Matt Curtin [email-masked] 
> http://www.interhack.net/people/cmcurtin/
>

---

From: Matt Curtin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Jun 1999 19:57:57 -0400 (EDT)

I'm in favor of the straw poll.

If there isn't consensus to say "FQDN is a MUST", I'm happy to
acquiesce and instead have a Proposed Standard or Best Current
Practice document which discusses Message-IDs for Internet usage in
detail.

(I think that it is very important to specify usage of the standard
for Internet traffic to require FQDN, but if there isn't consensus on
the "need" to specify such directly in DRUMS, and I'd like to do so
elsewhere, and soon, before software is written to comply with new
specifications that allow for bad practices to become (more)
commonplace.  This is probably a bigger deal for news than it is for
mail, but because the "news vs mail" line seems to be blurring more as
we move forward, I think it important that we have a single Message-ID
standard that applies for both applications.)

-- 
Matt Curtin [email-masked] http://www.interhack.net/people/cmcurtin/

---

From: Brad Knowles <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1999 11:42:47 +0200

> Practice document which discusses Message-IDs for Internet usage in

	I believe that there is already a message-id draft under way.  I 
would encourage you to take a look at it and get involved in that 
effort.

-- 
   These are my opinions -- not to be taken as official Skynet policy
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