Re: [exim] STARTTLS before EHLO?

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Author: Tony Finch
Date:  
To: W B Hacker
CC: exim-users
Subject: Re: [exim] STARTTLS before EHLO?
On Wed, 8 Feb 2006, W B Hacker wrote:
>
> Check the long history behind 587, including draft-hutzler-spamops-00.


That's a very new draft and still somewhat controversial - though I expect
most people here would agree with it. Port 587 is specified in RFC 2476
which is quite clear that the protocol is ESMTP, not SMTP-over-TLS.

> The principle fly in the EHLO / STARTTLS ointment is the large number of
> clients that may silently 'fall back' to un-encrypted, mode - or even stroll
> over to port 25.
> D'you suppose the mandated EHLO messages are visible in the MUA?
> Let alone understandable to the average user??


Crappy MUA user interfaces are a problem, but that's an implementation
issue not a standards issue. With any luck, draft-hutzler-spamops and the
increasing deployment of RFC 2476 submission servers will encourage MUA
user interfaces to improve.

Tony.
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