[ih] Fwd: Design choices in SMTP

[Dave Crocker]

On 2/8/2023 1:02 PM, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
>
> Here RFC 354 (THE FILE TRANSFER PROTOCOL) and RFC 385 (COMMENTS ON
> THE FILE TRANSFER PROTOCOL) are missing, the latter includes MAIL
> and MLFL.

Count me as both befuddled and embarrassed.  No idea why/how I missed 385.

I left off 354 because it doesn't provide any email protocol specification.

The fact that 385 explicitly specifies MAIL and MLFL makes the fact that 
neither are in the RFC 542 version of FTP quite odd..


>   And there is also RFC 561 "Standardizing Network Mail

Right. My focus was strictly on interconnection, not the nature of the 
content being moved exchanged.

While all sorts of message formats were flying around for years over the 
Arpanet, and RFC 561 gets credit as the first format standard, it was 
deemed a failure, with nothing stabilizing the topic until 1977, with 
RFC 733.


> Headers".  (Now, i really would have to read them again, i was
> born in June 1972, you know.)

You were just in time for the first public demonstration of the Arpanet. 
I'm sure your remember that...


>   |  * RFC 475 also discusses the topic and introduces the MAIL and MLFL
>   |    constructs.
>   |  * Yet the Aug, 1973 FTP revision (RFC 542) still does not include MAIL
>   |    or MLFL. In fact, it has text that says mail should be a separate
>   |    protocol, even as it defines a mail Reply code...
>
> This is ARPANET specific?

All of this was entirely Arpanet-specific.  Eventually, independent 
efforts including uucp-based Unix exchanges and Bitnet IBM-based 
exchange developed.  And the work in Europe. Interconnection efforts 
were entirely ad hoc, until the late 1970s.  Uniform addressing, among 
them, didn't emerge until the mid-/late- 1980s.

Remember, the Arpanet -- and btw the Internet -- were intended as 
research, not national or global production service.  That took another 
20 years to move into.  Through most of that time, the expectation was 
that the actual, global standards would come from ISO and CCITT (ITU).


d/

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