[apps-discuss] APPSDIR review of draft-melnikov-smtp-priority-09
Claudio Allocchio <Claudio.Allocchio@garr.it> Wed, 28 March 2012 15:12 UTC
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Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2012 17:12:25 +0200
From: Claudio Allocchio <Claudio.Allocchio@garr.it>
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Subject: [apps-discuss] APPSDIR review of draft-melnikov-smtp-priority-09
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I have been selected as the Applications Area Directorate reviewer for this draft (for background on appsdir, please see http://trac.tools.ietf.org/area/app/trac/wiki/ApplicationsAreaDirectorate). Please resolve these comments along with any other Last Call comments you may receive. Please wait for direction from your document shepherd or AD before posting a new version of the draft. Document: draft-melnikov-smtp-priority-09 Title: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol extension for Message Transfer Priorities Reviewer: Claudio Allocchio, GARR Review Date: March 28th 2012 IETF Last Call Date: 2012-03-28 IESG Telechat Date: n/a Summary: In its declared scope, this document provides a mechamism (and implementation suggestions) in order to enble a "real" priority delivery service into the global e-mail handling scenario. However, it also introduces a concept idea on how to "tunnel" new SMTP parameters requests via MTAs which do not support and ignore them, embedding them into e-mail Heders fields. In doing this it breaks the ideal separation between Envelope (SMTP) and Content (Headers and bodyparts) in a different a new way than it was done before, because is causes Headers to be able to modify Envelope parameters. There is no negative consideration in this, but this feature should also be stated more explicitly in the introduction. In general the document is well specified, and no major technical issues are present. However I suggest yet another turn of consideraion for the state iself of the specification: the WG and many others propose to go into Standards Track, but in order to do this there are at least some more exlicit considerations to clarify into the text itself. Also, it is not easy to guess what will be the adoption level of this mechanism, and the risk introduced by possible inaccurate implementations shall also be evaluated before going Proposed Standard. Major Issues: The first major issue is non-technical. The e-mail service via SMTP (and gateways and other related transport protocols) is best-effort, often first-in/first-out based. And by itself, e-mail is a non real-time service, like a chat, or text broadcast services: it is delivered into a mailbox where the recipient will read it at his/her will. Although many mail clients now uses a push-like model, delivering messages on "always on" devices, the proposed new service extension aims to provide differentiated service among messages. As correctly stated into the document iself, there is a parallel between this and network transport level services, where packets are prioritised. But also in this case, the proposed mechanism will start to produce benefits only when congestion in some parts of the mail transport system exists. When congestion does not exist, the mechanisms will not result in better service. This is not a drawback, but it should be stated more explicitly in the document. Maybe expanding it into the 5.4 section, where comparison with RFC2474 and RFC2205 are done. The other major issue to consider is the global trust model which is needed to implement the mechanisms. There are suggestions in the specification on how to enhance security when tunnelling across non supprting MTAs, for example, but in the document there are also other suggestions which consider the extension applicable easily only within restricted trusted communities. This apparently contradictory point shall be explained better. If this specification is going Proposed Standard, it shall be crystal clear about these scenarios, because implementers who did not take part in the original discussion will implement it, and thus all pre-assupmtions made during the discussion process of the specification discussion will not be available for them. Minor Issues: There is no discussion (explicit) about how this specification interacts/interferes with anti-spam techniques like graylisting / whitelisting. Section 5.1 suggests that shorter retry times shall be used for higher priority messages, but it does not mention at all graylisting, for example. This should be explicitly mentioned, and some guidance / suggestion given, to ensure a coherent behaviour. The sentence in section 2 "The most important reason for emails to be delayed is a transient error response from the next MTA to which the email must be transferred." should also explicitly refer to the graylisting case (which also causes often a "reply" message to be delivered before the original message is). Section 4.2: why allowing an X-something like X-Priority to be used? I understand why not "Importance" and why yes "Priority"... but... Maybe this specification should "update" or even attempt to Obsolete partially RFC2156? Section 4.5: the text say that in case of mailing lists and aliases the Header parameters tunnelling this specification extension SHOULD retain the original priority. What about the many implementations where headers are completely re-written and many parameters just disappear? Some sentence should be given aout this case, too. Section 4.6... not all "non e-mail" environment allow addition of an "header field"... how do we handle this? Section 9: given the current architecture, I'm very worried this will ALWAYS happen (different behaviours because different support at various MX-pointed servers). I'd make the consideration more explicit and suggest a stronger guidance. Appendix A, B, C are very environment specific. Appendix A and C, however, seem very specific environment related (the NATO messaging military convetions for "A" and the USA Civil Protecion service for "C"). While "B" is really global, beacause it maps OSI X.400 service, the other two appendix seems too environment specific for an international standard RFC specification. I would suggest handling at least "A' and "C" not as appendixes of this document, but as separate short "mapping specification", also to enable further similar documents to be published/registered more easily for other environments. Nits: none. Best Regards! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Claudio Allocchio G A R R Claudio.Allocchio@garr.it Senior Technical Officer tel: +39 040 3758523 Italian Academic and G=Claudio; S=Allocchio; fax: +39 040 3758565 Research Network P=garr; A=garr; C=it; PGP Key: http://www.cert.garr.it/PGP/keys.php3#ca
- [apps-discuss] APPSDIR review of draft-melnikov-s… Claudio Allocchio
- Re: [apps-discuss] APPSDIR review of draft-melnik… Alexey Melnikov
- Re: [apps-discuss] APPSDIR review of draft-melnik… Claudio Allocchio
- Re: [apps-discuss] APPSDIR review of draft-melnik… Alexey Melnikov