Subject: RE: [Asrg] seeking comments on new RMX article

From: "Bob Atkinson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 May 2003 16:53:16 -0700

> Another common case involves people traveling.  If you plug your
laptop
> into the network of a hotel or one of your consulting clients, you
> might prefer to use an envelope and From header address at your home
> systems instead of [email-masked] or
[email-masked].

I'd like to understand this scenario better, as at present I am
confused.

Among my confused thoughts are the following questions: What were the
steps that led to a mail address and mail server in my hotel room? Which
part of the hotel's policy forced me into that? Does any hotel actually
do this? In your understanding, which SMTP server is the STMP client on
my laptop talking to in order to send it's mail?

I would have expected instead that having got IP connectivity, my mail
reader on my laptop would have connected back to my normal home (e.g.:
pop3.mycompany.com/smtp.mycompany.com) and then sent and received mail
through there as usual, resulting in the normal From headers, etc.

	Bob

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From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 May 2003 18:37:40 -0600 (MDT)

> From: "Bob Atkinson" <[email-masked]>

> through there as usual, resulting in the normal From headers, etc.

POP3 is fine for fetching accumulated mail from your mailbox
mycompany.com.  How do you send mail?

Now that I think about it, I realize I'm thinking of such as running
sendmail/UNIX on the laptop to send mail.  My preconceptions run that
way, while others tend to think of personal computers as dumb terminals
connected to a BBS and using IP instead of x-term or some other
specialized protocol largely out of inertia and marketing.

Vernon Schryver    [email-masked]
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From: Yakov Shafranovich <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 06 May 2003 21:43:57 -0400

I use a local STMP server to send mail. I travel a lot and use a cell phone 
on the road. The cell phone provider doesn't provide me with a stable SMTP 
server, so I use a local one (called PostCastServer) to send my email 
directly to the recipients'  SMTP servers. My Internet provider at home 
doesn't provide any email servers either, so I am kind of stuck. In a 
RMX/rDNS world, would I have to pay to subscribe to a RMX-enabled SMTP 
server instead of using my current setup?

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From: "Alan DeKok" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 07 May 2003 12:07:44 -0400

> server instead of using my current setup?

  No, the people who provide you connectivity will be held responsible
for authenticating you, before your traffic reaches the network.

  This is no different than what happens today.  The only bone of
contention is that this explicit condition of consent now applies to
the content of SMTP traffic, where the envelope appears to be
misleading.

  Alan DeKok.

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From: "Tom Thomson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 12:22:17 +0100

>> Another common case involves people traveling.  If you plug your laptop
>> systems instead of [email-masked] or [email-masked].
>
>I'd like to understand this scenario better, as at present I am confused.
>

Two separate questions there.

1.  Yes, some hotels provide a mailserver and a guest email acount (for
example hotels using Neos products).  Often these are send only accounts
(horrible concept, isn't it).  However, the MUA in these cases is a machine
owned and managed by the hotel (at least in all cases I'm aware of) and not
the guest's laptop, and both the content From header and the envelope From
header will be as Vernon described.

2.  Yes, hotels provide internet connectivity for guests laptops.  When they
do so they usually expect the guest to connect to there normal mail
provider.  This is a problem with providers that don't do authentication of
some sort, but not the hotel's problem so they've not much incentive to
solve it. Some do block port 25 so you have to use their outbound MTA, and
that writes a suitable Received From header identifying the room, but I
don't think these systems usually rewrite the envelope From address.

I haven't seen a case where the envelope From would identify the hotel room
when the sending MUA is the guest's laptop rather than the hotel's machine,
but I imagine this situation exists as suggested by Vernon.  It's just a
variant of 2 above where the hotel's MTA does rewrite the envelope From.

Tom

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 9 May 2003 23:43:20 -0400

On Thu, May 08, 2003 at 12:22:17PM +0100, Tom Thomson wrote

> 1.  Yes, some hotels provide a mailserver and a guest email acount
> (for example hotels using Neos products).  Often these are send only
> accounts (horrible concept, isn't it).  However, the MUA in these
> cases is a machine owned and managed by the hotel (at least in all
> cases I'm aware of) and not the guest's laptop, and both the content
> From header and the envelope From header will be as Vernon described.
> 
> 2.  Yes, hotels provide internet connectivity for guests laptops.
> When they do so they usually expect the guest to connect to there
> normal mail provider.  This is a problem with providers that don't do
> authentication of some sort, but not the hotel's problem so they've
> not much incentive to solve it. Some do block port 25 so you have
> to use their outbound MTA, and that writes a suitable Received From
> header identifying the room, but I don't think these systems usually
> rewrite the envelope From address.

  This is where ssh-tunnelling and webmail-over-SSL come in *VERY*
handy.  If a company can afford to send an executive to a faraway city
and pay for a laptop, they can afford to install ssh on his/her laptop.

-- 
Walter Dnes <[email-masked]>
Email users are divided into two classes;
1) Those who have effective spam-blocking
2) Those who wish they did
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From: "Tom Thomson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 May 2003 20:22:28 +0100

> and pay for a laptop, they can afford to install ssh on his/her laptop.

Yes, I agree, that is the proper solution for the roaming sender (even
though it would reduce my employers' revenues - we provide some of those
hotel systems).  But persuading these rich companys to do the right thing is
not easy.  Now if SSL came out of the box with Windows XP and MACOS X the
issue would go away pretty quick.

Tom