Subject: Re: [EAI] The value of simplified downgrade

From: Shawn Steele <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:16:17 +0000

So you aren't suggesting an eai aware client should be able to downgradw w/o an eai aware server on it's side?  That is unnecessarily restrictive.

Sent from my HTC FUZE™, a Windows Mobile® smartphone from AT&T

-----Original Message-----
From: SM <[email-masked]>
Sent: Thursday, September 10, 2009 11:12 AM
To: Shawn Steele <[email-masked]>
Cc: [email-masked] <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: [EAI] The value of simplified downgrade

Hi Shawn,
At 09:44 10-09-2009, Shawn Steele wrote:
>A problem with a VRFY type solution is that it's a spammers dream,
>since it would tell them good mailboxes.

VRFY could help in getting the EAI-addr.  As that feature has been
turned off in the default configuration since a long time, I'm not
sure whether you can sell it as a solution.  By the way, I can tell
what are the good mailboxes even if VRFY is disabled.

>I'm also concerned that an ask-the-server type solution would be
>more fragile.  Numerous things could make it hard to ask the server,
>yet transmit legacy mail.  For example, would you expect EAI aware
>mail clients to contact the server directly if they don't have an
>EAI aware server?  Port 25 is often blocked, forcing use of a local server.

The EAI mail client (not to be confused with the SMTP client) should
be using the submission port.  You cannot "ask the server" as you'll
run into port 25 blocking and other techniques which prohibits that.

Regards,
-sm

---

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 2009 13:23:02 -0700

At 11:16 10-09-2009, Shawn Steele wrote:
>So you aren't suggesting an eai aware client should be able to 
>downgradw w/o an eai aware server on it's side?  That is 
>unnecessarily restrictive.

No, my comment was about not having a MUA interact with the SMTP 
server at the receiving end.

I'll comment further in my reply to Ernie's message.

Regards,
-sm

---

From: Shawn Steele <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 2009 23:10:42 +0000

I wasn't very clear, stuck on my cell phone, sorry.

I mean that if a user is trying to send To: and EAI address, and has an EAI aware client, it'd be nice if it could "downgrade" before it got to the server on the sending side.  Then, even though the sender's mail server isn't an EAI server, they could still have a rich EAI experience.  For example, the sender could be me in a US company that doesn't see a need for EAI mailboxes sending mail to a Japanese EAI address.

I think that to be "complete" downgrade would need to consider that kind of scenario (downgrade from sender client before reaching sender server).  That necessitates some sort of automatic mechanism for downgrade, since the sender may not have the ASCII address.  So either algorithmic, or perhaps contacting the server hosting the EAI address.  Due to port blocking, firewalls and proxies and all that, I'm skeptical that the information could be requested reliably from the host server.

-Shawn

-----Original Message-----
From: SM [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Thursday, September 10,  2009 13:23
To: Shawn Steele
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: RE: [EAI] The value of simplified downgrade

Regards,
-sm