Re: Last Call: SMTP Service Extension for Content Negotiation to Proposed Standard

> At 08:00 PM 7/5/02 -0400, Keith Moore wrote:
> >in other words, enabling the sender to make the choice is not
> >compatible with the vast majority of the deployed email
> >infrastructure (even assuming that those MTAs are extended to
> >support this extension)
> 
> Having the sender make the final choice of format is fundamental to the
> content negotiation work completed so far for Internet fax, and is very
> much in line with the fax service model that we are trying to emulate.

okay, but I don't think that's clear from reading the document.  

and like I said, it won't work for current typical SMTP deployments -
for those the MTA making the decision is almost certainly going to be 
distant from the recipient.  

and given the huge problems with viruses and spam, I don't think we're
likely to see a movement to open up direct access to SMTP servers.

actually I have to wonder - will network admins open up port 25 even
to allow incoming traffic to go directly to their internet fax machines
when they won't do so for SMTP servers on general-purpose hosts?
in any network of sufficient size it seems like it would be a major
pain to keep track of which hosts were fax machines and which were 
something else.  far easier to just require all port 25 traffic to
go through a firewall of some kind.

Keith