Subject: RE: Yahoo is not using ESMTP

From: Sean Dorman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2004 16:17:36 -0800 (PST)

Should ISP's increase the minimum acceptable attachment size to 10M?
 
If anything this will burden the Internet even more. 

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From: Franck Martin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Nov 2004 13:06:33 +1200

Off course not.

In many situations around the world in developing countries, it is
totally impossible to send a 10MB e-mail because the link will be at
least break once in the time it takes to send 10MB. As e-mail does not
resume...

There are still many countries which only connection to the Internet is
a 64kb/s and quite a lot which speed is below 512kb/s

Developed countries and the IETF need to cater for these emerging
nations to avoid the digital divide.

I think as yahoo being a major e-mail provider it would be good, that
they become more responsible (they are actively fighting SPAM) and use
ESMTP when sending their e-mails. It seems they do use ESMTP to receive
e-mails...

Cheers

> If anything this will burden the Internet even more. 

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Franck Martin
[email-masked]
"Toute connaissance est une réponse á  une question"
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From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 13 Nov 2004 07:28:41 -0800 (PST)

> least break once in the time it takes to send 10MB. As e-mail does not

FWIW, RFC 1845 specifies such a mechanism for SMTP. There have been
few implementations, however.

> ESMTP when sending their e-mails. It seems they do use ESMTP to receive

ESMTP in general and the SIZE extension in particular do offer
some significant advantages in such situations.

				Ned

---

From: Simon Leinen <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Nov 2004 18:11:33 +0100

ned freed writes:
>> totally impossible to send a 10MB e-mail because the link will be
>> at least break once in the time it takes to send 10MB. As e-mail
>> does not resume...

> few implementations, however.

Yes, that's a pity.

>> There are still many countries which only connection to the
>> Internet is a 64kb/s and quite a lot which speed is below 512kb/s

>> nations to avoid the digital divide.

The IETF has addressed these issues quite well I think, because the
standards are there.  The IETF doesn't really have a tradition of
advocating the use of these standards to service providers.  Maybe a
job for ISOC (or the UN :-?.

>> I think as yahoo being a major e-mail provider it would be good,
>> that they become more responsible (they are actively fighting SPAM)
>> and use ESMTP when sending their e-mails. It seems they do use
>> ESMTP to receive e-mails...

Their inbound mailers do support SIZE and also PIPELINING (see below),
so yes, it would be nice if they honored your SIZE declaration when
sending out messages.  Have you tried to ask them why they don't?

> some significant advantages in such situations.

Also the PIPELINING extension extension (RFC 2197), which increases
the chances for short messages to reach destinations over long and/or
congested links.
-- 
Simon.

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Nov 2004 11:00:45 -0500

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

>>>>> "Franck" == Franck Martin <[email-masked]> writes:
    Franck> In many situations around the world in developing countries,
    Franck> it is totally impossible to send a 10MB e-mail because the
    Franck> link will be at least break once in the time it takes to
    Franck> send 10MB. As e-mail does not resume...

  That's not true.

  The MIME spec long ago said that large emails should be broken into
multiple parts. Unix based mailers have done this (sometimes by default)
since their inception. 

  The problem is that Windows-based systems frequently do not cope with
the multiple packets.

  What we do need, however, are better software for exchanging files.
  We have a glut of underused protocols.

  Things that can run ad-hoc peer-to-peer, and also systems that can be
facilitated by ISPs. At this point, I think that GPG or S/MIME
encryption of a file, posted to a webdav server is probably enough.

    Franck> I think as yahoo being a major e-mail provider it would be
    Franck> good, that they become more responsible (they are actively
    Franck> fighting SPAM) and use ESMTP when sending their e-mails. It
    Franck> seems they do use ESMTP to receive e-mails...

  Why the developing world would want to keep all their emails at the
far side of a slow pipe is beyond me. Build local mail servers/systems.

]       ON HUMILITY: to err is human. To moo, bovine.           |  firewalls  [
]   Michael Richardson,    Xelerance Corporation, Ottawa, ON    |net architect[
] [email-masked]      http://www.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca/mcr/ |device driver[
] panic("Just another Debian GNU/Linux using, kernel hacking, security guy"); [

---

From: Franck Martin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 10:25:45 +1200

> job for ISOC (or the UN :-?.

I will tell ISOC

> sending out messages.  Have you tried to ask them why they don't?

I sent an e-mail to [email-masked] but I have not yet received a reply,
This is why I came to IETF as I suspect a few yahoo people are lurking
on the list, or there must be people her who knows the yahoo people.

Cheers

---

From: Franck Martin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 10:28:30 +1200

> far side of a slow pipe is beyond me. Build local mail servers/systems.

Which sentence in my e-mail made you think that? This last sentence is
not clear, which side of the pipe are you talking about and which
e-mails?

Cheers

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 06:54:59 -0500

At 06:11 PM 11/13/04 +0100, Simon Leinen wrote:
>advocating the use of these standards to service providers.  Maybe a job 
>for ISOC (or the UN :-?.

:^)

ISOC, in Franck's note, is indeed bringing an issue to the table. One might 
suggest commenting to NANOG (in North America, where Yahoo is located) or 
Apricot (The "AP" means "Asia/Pacific") in addition to the IETF list, but 
Franck is in fact doing this.

Franck, I'll see if I can talk with someone at Yahoo for you. This seems a 
reasonable request, especially given that Yahoo is a popular mail service 
among customers in digitally divided parts of the world.

   Regards,
     Fred Baker

/=====================================================================/
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  |     Chairman, ISOC BoT         |        Santa Barbara, California |
  +--------------------------------+        93117 USA                 |
  | Nothing will ever be attempted,| phone: +1-408-526-4257           |
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/=====================================================================/

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 06:40:35 -0500

>Should ISP's increase the minimum acceptable attachment size to 10M?

That is the ISP's choice. As a percentage of total volume, SMTP/ESMTP is a 
small proportion of total traffic, or so please I can read sample 
measurements (like 
http://www.caida.org/dynamic/analysis/workload/sdnap/0_0_/ts_top_n_app_bytes.html) 
would lead me to believe.

I just looked at the report for that interface, and have attached the GIF 
of the throughput for the past hour. At that particular measurement point 
during this particular hour, SMTP/ESMTP is noise.

>If anything this will burden the Internet even more.

Really?

---

From: "Randy Presuhn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2004 09:36:05 -0800

Hi -

> From: "Fred Baker" <[email-masked]>
> To: "Sean Dorman" <[email-masked]>
> Cc: <[email-masked]>
> Sent: Sunday, November 14, 2004 3:40 AM
> Subject: RE: Yahoo is not using ESMTP
...
> during this particular hour, SMTP/ESMTP is noise.
...

The protocol distribution is different now, though still not showing much
SMTP compared to HTTP, etc.  It would be interesting to know what all
that "tcp-other" traffic was.  The seven-day chart shows the TCP-other
with a daily spike at midnight and a fat weekly spike on Sunday.  My guess
would be that backup traffic would account for the pattern.

Randy

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2004 13:33:35 -0500

> would lead me to believe.

Umm.. what *exactly* is upstream of that interface?  I strongly suspect
that it's *heavily* influenced by *local* preferences/configuration.

For instance, at *all* timescales (5-min, hour, day, week, year), as I write
this, SMTP and SSH are on the same order of magnitude.  However, in the global
net, there's massive problems with SMTP spam, and the "average user" certainly
doesn't use SSH to the same extent as e-mail....

Unless of course, that was your point, and I managed to miss it.
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From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2004 11:06:23 -0800

At 09:36 AM 11/15/04 -0800, Randy Presuhn wrote:
>SMTP compared to HTTP, etc.

:^)

Like any other internet link, it changes from millisecond to millisecond. 
large components tend to include "tcp-other", http, and so on.

>It would be interesting to know what all that "tcp-other" traffic 
>was.  The seven-day chart shows the TCP-other with a daily spike at 
>midnight and a fat weekly spike on Sunday.  My guess would be that backup 
>traffic would account for the pattern.

That is likely a component. I tend to read "tcp-other" as "port-agile 
protocols", aka "kazaa etc"...

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2004 11:06:33 -0800

:^)

Care to speculate on the existence of any measurement point in the internet 
that is not heavily influenced by characteristics logically or physically 
local to it? Making statements about traffic in the network is a little 
like asking the temperature of the ocean; the answer depends a lot on who 
is asking and where the answering person is standing. That's why I fairly 
carefully referred to measurement points that *I* can read.

But frankly, every sample I have seen in the past decade placed SMTP in the 
"noise" category, a single digit percentage or less. Estimates I have heard 
from ISPs and seen on measurement sites available to me have consistently 
placed HTTP/HTTPS at better than 2/3 of total traffic in the late 1990's, 
and in the past few years have either estimated HTTP/HTTPS as neck-and-neck 
with file sharing traffic or have put file sharing well ahead. I recently 
understood from a Scandinavian ISP that DirectConnect is ~85% of their 
average workload.

Perhaps you could reply privately with your data; it would interest me.

---

From: stanislav shalunov <[email-masked]>
Date: 15 Nov 2004 17:18:41 -0500

Fred Baker <[email-masked]> writes:

> That is the ISP's choice. As a percentage of total volume,
> SMTP/ESMTP is a small proportion of total traffic, or so please I
> can read sample measurements (like

I can confirm this for a different network.

Email (which includes [E]SMTP, POP, IMAP, versions of these over TLS,
and such) comprises about 0.5% of the traffic on Abilene.  For
comparison, HTTP is about 15%.  (The ratio is almost exactly the same
as in the plot Fred cites.)

Even during weeks when there is an unusually large amount of SMTP
traffic because of email worms, we're still talking about 2% of
traffic being mail.

http://netflow.internet2.edu/weekly/

-- 
Stanislav Shalunov		http://www.internet2.edu/~shalunov/

This message is designed to be viewed at an angle of 45 degrees.

---

From: Franck Martin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 11:34:43 +1200

This is interesting, because on our side of the world, when I do an 
analysis, I can see that mail is about 30% of the TCP traffic, with the 
web being about 40% of TCP traffic.

I guess we do not have the same needs over very slow links...

Cheers

-- 
Franck Martin
ICT Specialist
[email-masked]
SOPAC, Fiji
GPG Key fingerprint = 44A4 8AE4 392A 3B92 FDF9  D9C6 BE79 9E60 81D9 1320
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---

From: Bruce Campbell <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 10:51:53 +0100 (CET)

> I guess we do not have the same needs over very slow links...

Look more at the patience factor.  Over a 'slow' ( high latency, low
bandwidth, high cost, or all of these ) link, applications which require
interaction are simply not as attractive to users.  This, coupled with the
relatively high cost of such links to the people using them, makes email
(and news) the far more _valued_ applications, as you can batch up your
replies and send them all at once.

The community that you are measuring for a given measurement is important.

--==--
Bruce.

I speak for myself.