Very good point Sandy, thank you.

For peering, it would be good to have some way to know what you are
connecting to. Since I have not had the "fun" of peering, I did not
think about that side of the coin.

Your point about putting X1 some where else now makes the most sense.

I included those points in my reply to Ipswitch.

John Tolmachoff 
IT Manager, Network Engineer
211 E. Imperial Hwy., Suite 106
Fullerton, CA� 92835
714-578-7999, ext. 104
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.reliancesoft.com
�


-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Sanford
Whiteman
Sent: Tuesday, March 12, 2002 1:49 PM
To: John Tolmachoff
Subject: Re[2]: [IMail Forum] IMail's "X1" RFC violation

John,

It  is  fairly  common to reveal mail server vendor information in the
220  greeting. Even security vendors will do this on their MXs (though
it's usually to show off their patch levels).

> Since all SMTP traffic is suppose to follow the same RFC and
standards,
> what does it matter as to whether or not it knows it is talking to
> another Imail server?

Many  of the technologies described in the RFCs are optional. A server
need  not  support  all  of  them--but  if  supported, they need to be
implemented in a consistent manner. The fastest way to get information
about  what  services  a  server supports is to look at the 220, since
it's  the  first  TCP response stream. For example, that's why vendors
put  "...with  ESMTP"  in  their  220  greetings, even though the RFCs
specify that a 250 in response to EHLO has the same meaning.

> But why would I want another Imail server to know that it is
connecting
> to my Imail server? 

I  think  it's quite reasonable to have this information available for
proprietary  interconnects  such  as  peering. The problem is that you
can't  turn it off! Instead of demanding that Ipswitch take out the X1
entirely,  which  is  unreasonable,  how  about  demanding  that it be
optional and put at the end of the greeting if it's enabled. If AOL or
anyone else starts to check for RFC compliance, a fix is going to have
to  be  made  available  instantly,  so  it  should be fixed now while
there's still time for regression testing.

I've  also  found that all peering needs is *a* 220 X1 ESMTP line, not
necessarily    the    first   one.   So   the   easiest   fix,   still
backward-compatible,  would  be to just put the proprietary tag on the
second line, and have the first line be RFC.

Sandy


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