WDIFF

draft-arun-ncc-smtp-00.txt --> draft-arun-ncc-smtp-01.txt

Internet-Draft Ncc in SMTP Mail Header Arun Sankar
Hewlett-Packard Company
Expires: June 12, September 11, 2004 March 11, 2004 December 12, 2003

Ncc in SMTP
draft-arun-ncc-smtp-00.txt Mail Header

Status of this Memo

This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with
all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026.

Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that
other groups may also distribute working documents as
Internet-Drafts.

Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six
months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents
at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet- Drafts as
reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
<http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt>

The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at
<http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html>.

Abstract

This draft presents a mechanism to simplify one of the
cumbersome aspects of mailing. The basic intention is to minimize
the complication when a mail needs to be sent to n - m mail IDs
i.e. send it to a group Id of n and exclude m from the alias [ALIAS]
list.

1. Introduction

The current situation is that when a mail is to be sent to an
alias [ALIAS] list, there is no possible way of a negating a set of
mail IDs from that list. The purpose of this draft is a solution
by the addition of another field in the SMTP Mail header. The intention
is to achieve this negation of a mail IDs from an alias [ALIAS].

2. Conventions Used in this Document

The key words "REQUIRED", "MUST", "MUST NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD
NOT", and "MAY" in this document are to be interpreted as described
in "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels"
[KEYWORDS].

Arun Sankar Expires June 12, September 11, 2004 [Page 1]

Internet-Draft Ncc in SMTP Dec 12 Mail Header March 11 2003

[KEYWORDS].

3. Requirement

The requirement is to provide the user with a field, using which
mails can be sent to a subset of an alias [ALIAS], i.e. a provision
"not" to deliver the mail to a set of mail IDs from the
alias [ALIAS].

4. Header Updations

A new field needs to be added into the SMTP header
[RECEIVER FIELDS] called "Ncc". This would act as a negation
to the To, Cc and Bcc fields and ensure the mail is not sent
to the mail ID mentioned in the "Ncc" field. The Ncc field
SHOULD be a part of the mail envelope directly or indirectly
in the implementation.

5. Format of the Field

The format specification of this field should be treated as
a "Cc" field. This field would be a part of the header and
would be carried forward throughout the mail thread.

6. The SMTP service extension for Ncc

The Ncc option MAY not be implemented in all Mail Servers.
This SHOULD not affect the servers that have implemented Ncc.
The client can figure out if the server has Ncc implemented
using the EHLO command transaction. When the client sends the
EHLO command, the server responds with "NCC".

E.g.
S: 220 test1.example.com ESMTP server ready
C: EHLO test2.example.com
S: 250-test1.example.com
S: 250 NCC

If the server does not respond with an Ncc, the mail SHOULD
not be processed further but a suitable error message like
"NCC" not supported should be sent back to the sender.

6. Processing of the Ncc Field.

The Ncc Field MUST be processed after the alias [ALIAS] has been
expanded. The mail IDs in the Ncc field MUST be removed from the
To, Cc and the Bcc fields during its processing. This field MUST
be treated similar to the Cc field and processing has to be done
in mail gateways, relays etc. The Ncc field has to be a part of
the mail envelope. Its existence in the envelope is necessary
as the alias expansion can happen in any intermediate server.
This field can directly be a part of the envelope or it can exist
through a envelope flag that can mention that the Ncc field is
Non-Null.

Arun Sankar Expires September 11, 2004 [Page 2]

Internet-Draft Ncc in Mail Header March 11 2003

7. Example

A needs to send a mail to a group but the intention is not to
send this to D.

From: A From: A
To: B To: B
CC: C,E,F,G,H CC: Team_ABCDEFGH
nCC: D
Subject: TEST Subject: TEST

On the continuation of the thread and D is still not a part of
the list.

From: B From: B
To: A To: A
CC: C,E,F,G,H CC: Team_ABCDEFGH
nCC: D
Subject: TEST Subject: TEST

Appendices

A. References

The following documents contain definitions or specifications that

Arun Sankar Expires June 12, 2004 [Page 2]

Internet-Draft Ncc in SMTP Dec 12 2003
are necessary to understand this document properly:

[ALIAS] J. Klensin, "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol",
RFC: 2821, April 2001

[RECEIVER FIELDS] Crocker, D., "Standard of the Format of
ARPA Internet Text Messages", RFC 822,
August 1982.

[KEYWORDS] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs
to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14,
RFC 2119, March 1997.

Author's Address

Arun Sankar
Hewlett-Packard,
29, Cunningham road,
Bangalore,
India 560052
sankar@hp.com
+91-80-205-3107

Intellectual Property Statement

The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any
intellectual property or other rights that might be claimed to
pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in
this document or the extent to which any license under such rights
might or might not be available; neither does it represent that it

Arun Sankar Expires August 6, 2004 [Page 3]

Internet-Draft Ncc in Mail Header March 11 2003

has made any effort to identify any such rights. Information on the
IETF's procedures with respect to rights in standards-track and
standards-related documentation can be found in BCP-11. Copies of
claims of rights made available for publication and any assurances
of licenses to be made available, or the result of an attempt made
to obtain a general license or permission for the use of such
proprietary rights by implementers or users of this specification
can be obtained from the IETF Secretariat.

The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any
copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary
rights which may cover technology that may be required to practice
this standard. Please address the information to the IETF Executive
Director.

This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph
are included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this
document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of
developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for

Arun Sankar Expires June 12, 2004 [Page 3]

Internet-Draft Ncc in SMTP Dec 12 2003
copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
English.

The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.

This document and the information contained herein is provided on an
"AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING
TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION
HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Arun Sankar Expires June 12, September 11, 2004 [Page 4]

----