On Tue, 23 Apr 1996, Neal Becker wrote:
> It seems turning off rfc1413 fixed at least one complaint. I vote to
> have it off by default. It really isn't all that useful anyway.
On Tue, 23 Apr 1996, Piete Brooks wrote:
> The problem with 1413 is that its prime use (for email) is for the calling
> site, rather than the called.
On Tue, 23 Apr 1996, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> It can be a critical part of tracking e-mail abuse, but only iff enough
> people start doing it, and they keep all their logs, and they put it in
> the Received: header. If you think it's not useful, then it won't be,
> but if you think it might someday be useful, it will be. Sorta like
> return-receipt, I guess! ;-)
Quite. If one of our users complains about a message and we contact the
sending site, they are likely to ask "what was the rfc1413 id that we
sent out?" Certainly that is my question if some remote site asks about a
message from our machines, which have tens of thousands of users.
On Tue, 23 Apr 1996, Neal Becker wrote:
> IMHO, so many people are now sending mail from their own PCs that what
> little usefullness there once might have been to 1413 (if everyone
> used it, which they don't) is overwhelmed by the problems it is
> causing.
IMHO this isn't actually the case everywhere, particularly for
academic sites such as ours.
This discussion is about choosing a DEFAULT (once I've implemented the
option, which I will do for the next release). Since there are clearly
views on both sides, I will exercise author's privilege to choose the
default, and I choose to leave it as it is, that is, enabled. I will try
to put something clear and noticeable in the documentation.
The current value of the default is a 60 second timeout. Perhaps
reducing this to, say, 30 would help in some cases? I thought 60 seconds
was reasonable, given that the SMTP listening timeout at the other end
would normally be at least 5 minutes. RFC 1123 says:
o Initial 220 Message: 5 minutes
A Sender-SMTP process needs to distinguish between a
failed TCP connection and a delay in receiving the initial
220 greeting message. Many receiver-SMTPs will accept a
TCP connection but delay delivery of the 220 message until
their system load will permit more mail to be processed.
Any views on what the non-zero default value should actually be?
--
Philip Hazel University Computing Service,
ph10@??? New Museums Site, Cambridge CB2 3QG,
P.Hazel@??? England. Phone: +44 1223 334714
