A number of people are aware that for years IMail's SMTP greeting has been
non-RFC-compliant (RFC821 section 4.3). Specifically, mail servers are
required to answer with a 3-digit code, followed by a space or dash,
followed by the host name of the server ("220 mail.example.com
..."). IMail instead responds with "220 X1 NT-ESMTP mail.example.com...".
Ipswitch has a new Knowledge Base article at
http://support.ipswitch.com/kb/IM-20020307-DM01.htm that now claims that
although what they are doing does violate RFC821, it does not violate
RFC2821 (which is in the process of replacing RFC821). It specifically
claims that the warning that our http://www.DNSstuff.com reports is incorrect.
However, there are two flaws to this logic. First, Ipswitch is wrong when
they say that "RFC2821 supercedes RFC821" -- RFC821 is still the
standard. RFC2821 will likely replace RFC821, but RFC821 is currently the
standard.
Second, RFC2821 section 4.3.1 says specifically "All the greeting-type
replies have the official name (the fully-qualified primary domain name) of
the server host as the first word following the reply code." There is no
vagueness or ambiguity here; IMail is now in violation of both RFC821 (the
standard) and RFC2821 (the proposed standard).
Hopefully, now that this is becoming a bigger and bigger issue, Ipswitch
will take care of this issue.
-Scott
---
Declude: Anti-virus, Anti-spam and Anti-hijacking solutions for
IMail. http://www.declude.com
---
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