Implementation Report for MDN (Mail Disposition Notice) to Draft Standard

The MDN protocol specification documented in RFC 2298 has seen widespread
implementation and deployment.  Several desktop clients send MDN requests
and generate MDN responses.  Fewer interpret the MDN responses in a machine
fashion.  VPIM and iFAX systems do interpret the MDN reports.

Many options defined in RFC 2298 have not seen implementation or deployment
and have been removed from the current draft.  As such, the following
changes have been made in <draft-vaudreuil-MDNbis-01.txt>

     The dispositions "denied", and "failed" were removed from the document
     reflecting the lack of implementation or usage at this time.

     The disposition modifiers "warning", "superseded", "expired", and
     "mailbox-terminated" have not seen actual implementation and have been
     deleted from the draft.  The extension modifier, while not currently
     used,
     has been retained for future extensibility.

     General editorial cleanups include spelling, grammar, and consistency
     in usage of terms.


The MDN specification has been implemented by a number of VPIM vendors,
including Comverse, Lucent, and Nortel.  These implementations request,
generate an MDN report, and machine interpret the result and render the
report to the user.

The specification is also implemented by several simple mode fax vendors
including Cisco, Ricoh, and Sharp. These implementations request an MDN,
generate a report, but generally render the report to the sender as
uninterpreted text.

Various desktop clients have implemented MDN including Netscape messenger,
Qualcomm Eudora, Microsoft Outlook, and Exmh.  These clients generally
support the request for an MDN, generate a MDN report, and present the MDN
report to the user.  The MDN report is generally presented as a text item
and not machine interpreted for richer presentation to the end user.


        Respectfully submitted,

        Greg Vaudreuil