Mailing List Archive

Dave,

The page at the url you specified in your attached looks very
good. The only feedback I have regards the heading statement "Open
Relays are banned:" which I think would be better phrased as "Open
Relays should be banned:".

The other titles are either declarative observational statements
about the ASCII art flow diagram (first two) or present a
recommendation (third). As there is no way to globally ban an open
relay, it would be factually wrong. I certainly agree with the
spirit of your statement, however "Open Relays should be banned:" is
probably right, if not "Open Relays must be banned:".

I'm not sure if you want to further modify your page, but if you
think about it, "bot nets" tend to exploit the model presented in the
"Open Relays are banned" section, which is yet another reason why
they should be or must be banned.

Best,

AlanM
The Commerce Company
TZ.Com - Travel Zippy

At 01:20 PM 1/23/2008, you wrote:
>... before we begin a discussion of how to solve the FORWARDING PROBLEM(S).
>
>Luckily, we don't need IETF approval, just the folks on this list.
>
>Reminder: We don't need to nail down the definition of every term
>for every Actor at every level, and we don't need to worry if our
>current terminology will apply to some future discussion. We can
>change it later. For now, we are talking about Actors and their
>Roles (Agent level, not machine or process level), and we just need
>a few words to model the typical Mail Handling Systems that we are
>concerned about.
>
>I've posted what I have so far at
>http://open-mail.org/MHSmodel.html If there are no better
>proposals, and no serious problems with this one, I'll take a
>snapshot of that page and post it to the list.
>
>-- Dave
>
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At 02:46 PM 1/23/2008 -0700, AlanM wrote:

>The page at the url you specified in your attached looks very good. The only feedback I have regards the heading statement "Open Relays are banned:" which I think would be better phrased as "Open Relays should be banned:".
>
>The other titles are either declarative observational statements about the ASCII art flow diagram (first two) or present a recommendation (third). As there is no way to globally ban an open relay, it would be factually wrong. I certainly agree with the spirit of your statement, however "Open Relays should be banned:" is probably right, if not "Open Relays must be banned:".

How about "Open Forwarders must be banned". That way we can avoid the ambiguous term "relay" entirely. I tend to think of a "relay" as a machine, and the entities we are talking about are Agents.

I've made that change at http://open-mail.org/MHSmodel.html. I will snapshot that page, and post it in the Mail System Terminology thread. Thanks to all who contributed, both on and off list.

-- Dave

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Everyone knows what an open relay is. Changing well established
terminology is not a recipe for successful communication.

Scott K

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Dave,

At 04:25 PM 1/24/2008, you wrote:
.. snip ..
>How about "Open Forwarders must be banned". That way we can avoid
>the ambiguous term "relay" entirely. I tend to think of a "relay"
>as a machine, and the entities we are talking about are Agents.
>
>I've made that change at http://open-mail.org/MHSmodel.html. I will
>snapshot that page, and post it in the Mail System Terminology
>thread. Thanks to all who contributed, both on and off list.
>
>-- Dave

Yes. That works very well. I also liked the consistency you put in
the forwarding titles in this revision.

FWIW, the term "open relay" is a historical term of art, however I
think the way you have things described now makes it less ambiguous
for everyone. Great job Dave!

Best,

AlanM
The Commerce Company
TZ.Com - Travel Zippy


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