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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Selection of Appropriate Local SMTP Relay
On Mon, Jan 10, 2000 at 09:01:49AM -0500, John R. Levine wrote: > >Selection of Appropriate Local SMTP relAy (SALSA :) > > > An alternative is to provide a method for a mail client to discover a > > suitable local smart relay in some dynamic fashion. This requires some > > ubiquitous, global, standard database which every operator uses... > > ... like the DNS. > > That's much too complicated. What we need are some well-known IP > addresses, analogous to well-known ports, that are not routable on the > global Internet, but that are assigned to standard services within > each network, e.g.: I think that both approaches have some merit, and neither are without complication. For example, the overloaded well-known-address approach might lead to operational confusion in the event that a temporary ISP doesn't provide the well-known service to a roaming user: + outbound packets from the user might spiral off into the default free zone, ultimately never connecting to anything + connection requests might follow the temporary ISP's default out to their transit provider who _does_ support the address, and that relay (correctly) refuses to relay for the user + the real identity of the well-known relay box that a given user connects to might change with time, making it harder to support the user This is going to provide operational confusion, I think. In this respect, at least, the MX idea works more cleanly in the event that there are _no_ MX records to be found. Interesting idea, though; thanks for mentioning it. It seems from some of the mail I have received that there is some interest in this idea. Rather than cluttering up NANOG any further, I'll take it to the roamops wg list at [email protected] Joe
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