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A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts directories.
This draft is a work item of the Detailed Revision/Update of Message Standards
Working Group of the IETF.
Title : Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
Author(s) : J. Klensin, D. Mann
Filename : draft-ietf-drums-smtpupd-07.txt
Pages : 61
Date : 20-May-98
This document is a self-contained specification of the basic protocol
for the Internet electronic mail transport, consolidating and
updating
* the original SMTP specification of RFC 821 [RFC-821],
* Domain name system requirements and implications for mail
transport from RFC 1035 [RFC-DNS] and RFC 974 [RFC974],
* the clarifications and applicability statements in
RFC 1123 [RFC-1123], and
* material drawn from the SMTP Extension mechanisms [SMTPEXT].
It replaces RFC 821, RFC 974, and the mail transport materials of RFC
1123. However, RFC 821 specifies some features that are not in
significant use in the Internet of the mid-1990s and (in appendices)
some additional transport models. Those sections are omitted here in
the interest of clarity and brevity; readers needing them should
refer to RFC 821.
It also includes some additional material from RFC 1123 that required
amplification. This material has been identified in multiple ways,
mostly by tracking flaming on the header-people list [HEADER-PEOPLE]
and problems of unusual readings or interpretations that have turned
up as the SMTP extensions have been deployed. Where this
specification moves beyond consolidation and actually differs from
earlier documents, it supersedes them technically as well as
textually.
Although SMTP was designed as a mail transport and delivery protocol,
this specification also contains information that is important to its
use as a 'mail posting' protocol, as recommended for POP [RFC-POP2,
RFC-POP3] and IMAP [RFC-IMAP4].
Section ##2.3 provides definitions of terms specific to this
document. Except when the historical terminology is necessary for
clarity, this document uses the current 'client' and 'server'
terminology to identify the sending and receiving SMTP processes,
respectively.
A companion document discusses message bodies and formats RFC 822,
MIME, and their relationship - [MSGFMT].
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