Re: 1983 and Internet

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Bob Frankston" <bob2-39 () bobf frankston com>
Date: September 14, 2009 12:18:36 PM EDT
To: <dave () farber net>, "'ip'" <ip () v2 listbox com>
Cc: "Dave Crocker" <dcrocker () bbiw net>
Subject: RE: [IP] Re: 1983 and Internet

I remember trying to do my own email relaying. As I remember it UDel  
registered a proxy account for each user on the bridging host. I  
wanted to take a different approach and preserve the envelope  
information so that Multics could act as (what was later called) an  
MTA (Mail Transfer Agent). The initial assumption seemed to be that  
mail would go one hop from mainframe to mainframe so I couldn’t use a  
user account as a relay.

We never did solve that in SMTP -- as far as I know there was no  
protocol for representing the envelope information in-band. Instead  
relay hosts would just relay the out-of-band envelope which made it  
hard use passive mail stores (such as user mailboxes) as relays.

When POP was developed it didn't deal with envelope information -- it  
just relayed for a single user.

The MCI version also had problems with envelopes which made relaying  
problematic there too.

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber [mailto:dave () farber net]
Sent: Monday, September 14, 2009 11:27
To: ip
Subject: [IP] Re: 1983 and Internet



Begin forwarded message:

From: Dave CROCKER <dcrocker () bbiw net>
Date: September 14, 2009 10:39:58 AM EDT
To: Craig Partridge <craig () aland bbn com>
Cc: dave () farber net, "David P. Reed" <dpreed () reed com>, Steve Crocker <steve () shinkuro com
 >, Richard Bennett <richard () bennett com>, Gordon Peterson <gep2 () terabites com
 >, John Shoch <shoch () alloyventures com>, Harold Burstyn <burstynh () iname com
 >, Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com>, Paul Robichaux <paul () robichaux net
 >
Subject: Re: 1983 and Internet



Craig Partridge wrote:
> The CSNET project, in particular, remembered that because they'd
> prepared
> carefully and had an TCP/IP SMTP server that worked pretty well, a
> number of
> folks fixed initial email problems by forwarding all their outbound
> email
> to the CSNET relay and letting CSNET sort it out...  Of course, the
> CSNET
> relay software was not so mature that it took this sort of abuse
> easily and

Craig is being kind about the state of the software.  I had added
initial support TCP/IP to MMDF, which meant that it could relay
between Arpanet and TCP/IP nodes.  Then I left.

The code was extremely immature and needed substantial work by a core
set of MMDF-related folk, including CSNet and Army Materiel Command.

It's probably also worth noting that Vint gave UDel a contract --
separate from CSNet -- to run an Arpanet/Internet email relay site.
Since I left before it was needed, I didn't hear how well that worked
out...

d/

--

  Dave Crocker
  Brandenburg InternetWorking
  bbiw.net




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