From: (no name) (no email)
Date: Tue Mar 01 2005 - 05:30:21 EST
> >Because that would require providers to act like professionals,
> >join an Internet Mail Services Association, agree on policies
> >for mail exchange, and require mail peering agreements in
> >order to enable port 25 access to anyone.
>
> Nice in theory, but I don't think it would scale. In essence you are
> asking for a return to the UUCP model, where if you wanted to send
> mail on the network you had to have a deal with someone.
No, I am not suggesting a return to the UUCP model. If I
was then I would have said that. I am suggesting that
we apply the lessons learned from the BGP peering model.
The BGP peering model evolved over many years of people
hashing out and modifying many bilateral peering agreements.
I don't think we need to do this with email, because we
the larger email providers can all sit down and together
and based on the BGP experience, they can come up with
a standard multilateral agreement that will suit most
people. Or, more likely, two multilateral agreements.
One for members of the email peering core, and the other
for non-core operators.
The reason this needs to be done in an association,
in public, is because email is not BGP. BGP is an arcane
piece of technology which does an arcane job in
interconnecting networks. There is no significant
public interest in BGP. Email, on the other hand, is
an end user service and it is abundantly clear that
the end users of the world are FED UP with the inability
of Internet email providers to maintain and improve
the quality of the service. Every year for the past 10
years the quality of Internet email has degraded.
And while other services like instant messaging can
take up some of the slack, they cannot fully replace
a store and foreward email system.
> But, every time someone tries a
> blanket block of (for instance) China, or even appears to do so,
> there's a huge outcry. If you create an organization to do that,
> you'll not only have an outcry, you'll have a target for legal action
> (restraint of trade?).
There you go again, just like everyone else. You assume
that the problem is somebody else and we just need to
shoot that somebody else with big guns. Well, I have
news for you. I HAVE SEEN THE ENEMY AND HE IS US!
The problem is a fundamental shoddiness in the
email services architecture which is compounded by
a fundamental shoddiness in email service operations.
Bandaid solutions abound. The whole thing is made
out of bits of string and sealing wax.
I recommend that you read Dave Crocker's draft
on Internet email architecture.
http://www.bbiw.net/specifications/draft-crocker-email-arch-03.html
In order to understand what I am getting at
you have to begin looking at the problem from
a high level, not down in the greasy gearboxes.
Dave's draft can be a bit inscrutable, but he
is at least trying to document the overall
architecture so that we can talk clearly about
how to manage it in a way that provides a
high quality email service to the end user.
--Michael Dillon
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