Subject: purpose of SMTP gateways

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 16:50:40 -0500

Can someone tell me which RFC references SMTP gateways?
I am looking for a good way to explain their purpose to our non-technical
management...

                         Thanks,

                              S. Beltz
                              sysadmin
                              Spark Services, Inc.

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From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 19:36:24 -0400

> Can someone tell me which RFC references SMTP gateways?

There is no RFC specifically for SMTP gateways.
SMTP is described in RFC 821,
the SMTP extension framework is described in RFC 1869,
and several other RFCs describe various SMTP extensions.

RFC 1123 has a little bit to say about mail gateways, which
would apply to SMTP gateways, but it is a bit dated and
doesn't discuss a lot of the issues that one encounters
in today's gateways, mail proxies, and especially firewalls.

Keith

p.s.  This isn't in any RFC, but in my experience, purely "native" 
Interent email systems *always* work better than any system
that tries to convert Internet email to and/or from some internal
or proprietary format.   The degree of damage varies from one 
product to another, but such conversions *always* damage incoming
and/or outgoing messages. Often they do so to the point of losing 
a great deal of information and seriously impairing your ability 
to communicate with other folks on the Internet.  Worse, gateways
are often responsible for "anti-social" behavior, like sending
nondelivery notices to the wrong address, causing mail forwarding
loops, or worse.  Even the gateways provided by several very well 
known vendors exhibit such behaviors.

The purpose of a mail gateway is to provide connectivity between 
Internet mail and legacy systems, and to allow a transition path 
from such systems to pure Internet mail.  Using an mail gateway 
for any other purpose - especially long-term production use -
is a highly dubious undertaking.

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From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 19:36:24 -0400

Keith

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From: "John W. Noerenberg" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 15:56:16 -0700

> > Can someone tell me which RFC references SMTP gateways?

Perhaps you're referring to 
<ftp://search.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-freed-firewall-req-02.txt 
 >.  It is not an RFC, however.

john noerenberg
[email-masked]
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From: "John W. Noerenberg" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 15:56:16 -0700

john noerenberg
[email-masked]