nanog mailing list archives

Re: unwise filtering policy from cox.net


From: Barry Shein <bzs () world std com>
Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2007 17:03:04 -0500



You're missing the point.

   xx () example com

is going to go to whatever MX example.com returns.

Sean's point was that you can't cause, e.g., eg () example com alone to
go to a server other than the same set of servers listed for
AnythingElse () example com.

If that (eg () example com) overloads those servers, even if they're
valiantly trying to pass the connection off to another machine, then
you have to use some other method like eg () special example com or
eg () other-domain com and hope the clients will somehow use that tho for
BIGCOMPANY there's a tendency to just bang in abuse () BIGCOMPANY COM.

It can be a problem in joe jobs, as one e.g.

If you think I'm wrong (or Sean's wrong) even for a milisecond then
trust me, this is going right over your head. Think again or email me
privately and I'll try to be more clear.

P.S. It's an interesting thought. The only approach to a solution I
could imagine is that the whole address would have to be passed in the
MX query.

On November 21, 2007 at 21:06 paul () clubi ie (Paul Jakma) wrote:

An unfortunate limitation of the SMTP protocol is it initially only
looks at the right-hand side of an address when connecting to a
server to send e-mail, and not the left-hand side.

full) or the normal server administrators may make changes which 
affects all addresses passing through that server (i.e. block by IP 
address).

I guess you're saying there's something architectural in email that 
makes it impossible/difficult (limitation) to apply different policy 
to the LHS.

That's not correct though. The receiving MTA is quite free to apply 
differing policies to different LHSes. And at least one MTA allows 
you special-case measures applied to tables of addresses, such as 
whether DNSbl lookups should be applied.

SMTP is distributed, so you do of course have to take care to keep 
distributed policy consistent. But, again, that has nowt to do with 
LHS/RHS of email addresses.

regards,
-- 
Paul Jakma   paul () clubi ie        paul () jakma org       Key ID: 64A2FF6A
Fortune:
A plumber is needed, the network drain is clogged

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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