[eweek article] Window of "anonymity" when domain exists, whois not updated yet

Wed Jan 12 14:09:35 UTC 2005

> > for some reason people are unwilling to imagine an email
> > system in which an ISP will only accept incoming messages
> > from another ISP with which they have an existing
> > agreement, i.e. rather like email peering.
> 
> You say this as if it's surprising that people are willing to accept
> communications from people they have not yet communicated with before.

There is a difference between an ISP and a person
who sends or receives email. I am only suggesting
that ISPs should make mail peering agreements,
not individuals. When I wrote a weekly column for
Internet World magazine, I frequently received email
from readers with whom I had not previously communicated
because my email address was printed at the bottom of
each article. I developped my suggestion with this
in mind.

Anyone will be able to write an email and relay it
through their ISPs authenticated submission port 
regardless of whether they are at home or in a hotel 
in some other country. If their ISP has a mail peering
agreement with my ISP, then it will be relayed directly
to them. If not, then they will relay it to a larger
email peer who can handle the mail routing. Clearly,
there has to be some way for a domain to publish
their email peers in DNS so that mail routing can
take place, but this is relatively trivial as are 
most of the technical issues. The bug problem to solve
is the operational issues of putting it all together
and negotiating mail peering areements.

> The world is not like your gated community.

I have never lived in a gated community. Also, this
new email architecture would not be a gated community.
It may start off as a special service offered by a few
larger ISPs to business clients, but over time I think
most people will migrate to it.

--Michael Dillon