Re: Discussion of Internet-Draft for SMTP priorities

On Tue, Jun 13, 2006 at 11:58:48AM -0400, ken carlberg wrote:
> Hello Michael,

Hello Ken,

this is just a quick answer to a couple of points I can respond to off
hand. I am going to give a more complete answer next week (I am out of
office starting tommorow until Monday including).

> 
> I would like to echo Janet's request of putting in place a  
> prioritization field that is more extendable so that various sets of  
> users could rely on different priority structures/values, but more  
> importantly, different associated policies.  The one major headache  
> is that if you go down this road, I think your draft will require  
> some significant changes.
>
> [...]

There seems to be a lot of interest in a more flexible priority
field. While I am not at all opposed to this idea, I do not see that I
have the time available to me to do it.

> One minor point involves Section 4.1  You mention using the ToS field  
> as a means of supporting expedited transfer.  Its probably best to  
> update that text with RFC-3168, which deprecates ToS (and precedence  
> fields) in favor of the Differentiated Services field.

OK, that should be easy to fix.

> [...]
> Outside of that, it would seem desirable for your draft to at least
> advocate some measures of security like S/MIME for header protection
> (rfc-3851), and possibly the use of AUTH.

S/MIME is strictly for the content of the email. This area has been
left out of the draft because of reasons stemming from the research
project I work on. In the general case it is probably a good idea to
at least consider this area. As for AUTH, you are completedly right.

> 
> Finally, in section 6.5.3, you state some specific delivery time  
> constraints.  I'm curious as to where you came up with those numbers  
> -- it would probably be helpful to add some context.
>
> [...] 

Yes, it would. The times were inspired by the NATO time constraints
but shortened because NATO includes the time required for some
administrative actions before and after the actual
transmission. (E.g. waking the commander of a unit if the message
comes in the dead of the night ;-).

> outside of that, its a nice document for discussion

Then I have achieved a major goal of my research project already ;-) 

Michael
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