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Internet-Draft Ncc in Mail Header Arun Sankar
Hewlett-Packard Company
Expires: September 11, 2004 March 11, 2004 October 05, 2005 April 05, 2005
Ncc in Mail Header
draft-arun-ncc-smtp-02.txt
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Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2003). (2004). All Rights Reserved. Reserved
Abstract
This draft presents a mechanism to simplify one of the cumbersome
aspects of mailing. mailing, when one needs to send mails only to a subset of
mail-ids from an alias [ALIAS] . The basic intention is only to minimize
the complication and difficulty of a mail user 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 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].
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[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
header in the implementation. This needs to be a part of the
header as the alias processing could be done in any of the
intermediate relay servers and the "Ncc" field needs to be
available for processing.
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. expanded and before the creation of the envelope. The
mail IDs in the Ncc field MUST be removed from the To, Cc and
the Bcc fields during its processing. If there is an alias
[ALIAS] in the "Ncc" field, it should be expanded first and
then proceed with the negation of the Mail-Id's. Each recipient
address from "Ncc" header field SHOULD NOT be copied to a RCPT
command. Any empty fields SHOULD then be removed from the
headers. Once this process is completed, the remaining headers
SHOULD be checked to verify that at least one To:, Cc:, or Bcc:
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header remains. If none do, then the From: address SHOULD to be
added to the "Rcpt To" command and the mail processing could be
continued. Implimentations SHOULD ensure appropriate error
conditions in case the To:, Cc: and the Bcc: field gets negated
and are nullified. This field MUST be treated similar to the Cc
field with respect to syntax and 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.
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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
8. Security Considerations.
The most important Security point that
are necessary needs to understand be considered
in 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 draft is with recpect to a User-Agent that does not
have Ncc implimented. This User-Agent might drop the header
that it does not understand. This could result in the "Ncc"
Header being dropped and even a server that supports the "Ncc"
field would not be able to process the "Ncc" field in the reply.
The other minor problem is when the server does not support
"Ncc", which is solved by the service extention to SMTP.
Appendices
A. References
The following documents contain definitions or specifications that
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.
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[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
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