Re: Piggybacking client hello on STARTTLS

At 2:43 PM -0700 6/4/97, Jeff Stephenson (Exchange) wrote:
>Not that I'm actually advocating this, but seems that we ought to at
>least bring up the possibility of piggy-backing the TLS client hello on
>the STARTTLS command in order to save a round trip.  Personally, I'm
>against it because it would also involve merging the SMTP reply code to
>STARTTLS with (perhaps) a TLS server hello in the response.  It just
>makes something that was nice and clean messier without (IMHO) gaining
>all that much.  Do others agree?

Nope, for lots of reasons including the ones you gave.

The SMTP model is that every client command gets a response; what if the
SMTP server decides it can't TLS?

It's a protocol level violation.

One round trip is minor in an SMTP session.

And so on.

--Paul E. Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium