> My strong belief is that a proposal for a new protocol that > does the same thing as SMTP but slightly better is a total > non starter. No matter how much better the protocol is the > cost of transition will dominate. Right! It is not the protocol that is at fault, it is the architecture in which the protocol is used. I once lived in a house that had not been designed by an architect. It started life as a granary, then was converted to a tiny house by installing a kitchen sink and a bathroom. Then the owner added a bedroom on one end, extending the gable roof. Next the house was doubled by extending it to one side under a shed roof. At this point the owner's alcoholism was affecting the quality of the work. Various corners were cut such as a single-pane mobile home window. Another bedroom was added to the other end of the house by extending only the shed-roof section. No electrical outlets in this part and only one tiny window. Finally, when the owner's alcoholism was well advanced he filled in the gap beside the last bedroom with a hand-poured concrete floor, and a roof and walls made with poles (with the bark still on) and scrap plywood. This became the entrance foyer to the house. Shortly thereafter, I bought the house, my first home purchase. The Internet email architecture is a lot like this house, with add-ons and patches. The latest round of SPF/DKIM stuff feels a lot like that last room built with poles and whatever scrap was handy. I just feel that given the lessons learned in scaling an email system to global proportions, we could do better by taking an overall architectural view to the problem, and coming up with a more robust architecture. > The only way that I see a new email infrastructure emerging > is as a part of a more general infrastructure to support > multi-modal communication, both synchronous and asynchronous, > bilateral and multilateral, Instant Messaging, email, voice, > video, network news all combined in one unified protocol. Wrong! This is a sure way to invite second-system effect. Read this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month or better yet, read the book itself. Sometimes it is better to leave things out of your design than to include them all. --Michael Dillon _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf