Re: rfc 3030 comments...

[Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu]

On Mon, 10 Sep 2001 13:34:20 -0000, Franck Martin said:

> I'm just reading the rfc 3030 you made. I have been looking around for
> such protocol for large messages and I have been talking about it on the
> ietf at ietf.org mailing list.
> 
> I think the RFC could be even greater if it would allow to send chunks
> in separate sessions... Bigger will be the mail message, higher there
> will be a session error or connection drop. Therefore you have to be
> able to recover (like http and ftp protocol do)...
> 
> An extension to RFC3030 would be to have the server answering by a
> session ID with chunking and to use this ID in following BDAT commands
> in other sessions to recover from where the system left... Or other
> means of recovery... 

I've read over RFC1845 (SMTP Checkpoint/Restart), and it *seems* to do
what you want.  However, I'm cc:ing this to the IETF-SMTP list, in case
somebody with more knowledge of RFC3030 and 1845 can see if there's any
subtle interaction.  It *looks* like it should be OK, as per RFC1845
you are handed a '355 octet-offset is the transaction offset' before
you commmit to sending a 'BDAT nnnn' to start sending.

RFC1845 does say this:

   The SMTP canonical format for messages is used when this offset is
   computed.  Any octets added by any SMTP data-stuffing algorithm do
   not count as part of this offset. In the case of data transferred
   with the DATA command the offset must also correspond to the
   beginning of a line.

It's unclear if the beginning-of-line requirement applies if BDAT is
in use, or how it would be handled if binary data was being transmitted.
-- 
				Valdis Kletnieks
				Operating Systems Analyst
				Virginia Tech

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