[ih] Design choices in SMTP

[Dave Crocker]

On 2/7/2023 9:26 AM, John Klensin via Internet-history wrote:
> * SMTP was designed along the model of FTP, which preceded it as the mail
> transport mechanism, and that made the command-response model seem natural

As I recall, there was discussion about whether the exchange should do a 
transaction for each addressee, versus for the entire set of 
addressees.  I believe per-addressee was chosen to greatly simplify 
failure analysis.

If addresses had been done as a single part of the transaction, there's 
the task of figuring out which one(s) were the problem.

Simplicity and diagnosability were strong forces in the design of 
Arpanet/Internet application protocols.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
mast:@dcrocker at mastodon.social