John,
It may have been fixed when we (the people participating in the
long discussion on the ietf-smtp list) were not looking, in
which case, thanks to the Secretariat.. I think (read that list
for the reason for the qualification)).
However, as I tried to say several times, that isn't the point.
The point is that, apparently, some committee representing "the
leadership" -- a committee whose existence, charge, and
composition I don't believe has been publicly announced -- gave
AMS instructions (years ago - this is not about the current
IESG) about blocking IP address literals, instructions that
violated an IETF standard. I don't know if the IESG reviewed
those instructions before they were given, but I'm not convinced
that makes any difference at this point. I think instructions
that tell the Secretariat to violate an IETF standard,
regardless of the technical details, are a bad idea and an
especially bad one when the community does not know what is
going on. YMMD, of course. If the committee (or the IESG) was
not aware that following the instructions would violate the
standard (and I suspect that was the case), then we still have a
problem because anyone looking at us from the outside doesn't
know or care whether we are not conforming to our standards
deliberately or by accident or ignorance.
So, again, I want to understand whether we (both the leadership
and the broader IETF community) think that instructing the
Secretariat to violate IETF standards is ok. And, if it is not
ok, what mechanisms we need to prevent similar occurrences,
possibly over less obscure issues, in the future.
best,
john
p.s. And, yes, I have seen the pointers to the anti-spam
policies. But whether this case is covered at all there is open
to question and, more important, nothing in that policy
statement says "reducing spam by even a small percentage is so
important that it is ok for the IETF mail servers to reject
legitimate SMTP sessions even when such rejections are
explicitly prohibited by the standard". Had such a statement
appeared, I assume that the discussion that has been occurring
on the ietf-smtp list for the last few weeks would have occurred
years ago.
--On Sunday, December 15, 2019 17:29 -0500 John Levine
<johnl@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> In article <8EE11B75E1F8A7E7105A1573@PSB> you write:
>> It has recently come to the attention of several of us, via an
>> extended discussion on the SMTP list, that the IETF email
>> servers are rejecting all SMTP connections whose EHLO commands
>> contain IP address literals. ...
>
> $ telnet -4 mail.ietf.org 25
> Trying 4.31.198.44...
> Connected to mail.ietf.org.
> Escape character is '^]'.
> 220 ietfa.amsl.com ESMTP
> ehlo [64.57.183.53]
> 250-ietfa.amsl.com
> 250-PIPELINING
> 250-SIZE 67108864
> 250-ETRN
> 250-STARTTLS
> 250-AUTH PLAIN LOGIN
> 250-AUTH=PLAIN LOGIN
> 250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
> 250 8BITMIME
> quit
> 221 2.0.0 Bye
> Connection closed by foreign host.
>
> $ telnet mail.ietf.org 25
> Trying 2001:1900:3001:11::2c...
> Connected to mail.ietf.org.
> Escape character is '^]'.
> 220 ietfa.amsl.com ESMTP
> ehlo [ipv6:2001:470:1f07:1126:0:43:6f73:7461]
> 250-ietfa.amsl.com
> 250-PIPELINING
> 250-SIZE 67108864
> 250-ETRN
> 250-STARTTLS
> 250-AUTH PLAIN LOGIN
> 250-AUTH=PLAIN LOGIN
> 250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
> 250 8BITMIME
> quit
> 221 2.0.0 Bye
> Connection closed by foreign host.
