RE: Blast from the past

[Dave Crocker <dhc2 at dcrocker.net>]

At 03:14 PM 1/26/2001 -0500, John C Klensin wrote:
> With FTP, the mail was delivered more or less into the space of
> the receiving user.  So any conversations that were done (and I
> can't remember much, if anything) would have needed to be done in
> what we would now call the receiving MUA -- there really was no
> _mail_ transport process.

architecturally, the MAIL commands within FTP were identical to SMTP.  They 
were an email transport protocol.

Both delivermail/Sendmail and MMDF were alive an kicking before 
RFC821.  The introduction of SMTP did not alter the roles or basic system 
processing of either of these applications.  It just added one more 
transport protocol to their set.  That is, however we would characterize 
their behaviors now, such as distinguishing activities within the MUA 
versus elsewhere -- it was the same before SMTP.

There were other email processes that worked the same way, but the only one 
I know any details about was the MMDF predecessor that we did at Rand in 
1978.  My impression is that the Multics NCP email software had a similar 
architecture.

d/


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Dave Crocker  <dcrocker at brandenburg.com>
Brandenburg Consulting  <www.brandenburg.com>
Tel: +1.408.246.8253,  Fax: +1.408.273.6464