Email peering (Was: Economics of SPAM [Was: Micorsoft's Sender IDAuthentication......?]

Thu Jun 16 20:06:12 UTC 2005

Of course, there's already one application-level messaging 
protocol that relies extensively on arranged peerings: Usenet.

Usenet doesn't rely on a *full* N-way mesh of arranged peerings, 
it relies instead on a core of fairly well interconnected
"backbone" or "core" news sites who've agreed to do feeds with 
each other, as well as to feed downstream "leaf nodes" (either
on a for-fee commercial basis, or gratis as part of a regional 
consortia or whatever). 

To receive traffic or originate traffic, a leaf node doesn't 
need to peer with every other news server, it just needs to do
feeds with a couple of upstream core sites to insure that it has 
reasonable coverage and redundancy. 

Spam isn't much of a problem on Usenet anymore because peers who
tend to have spam issues tend to clean them up or get depeered
or shunned...

There's no reason why one couldn't build a comparable model
for mail, with the SMTP speciality service provider offering 
"SMTP transit" to a base of trusted customers. This comparatively
small number of SMTP speciality provider would then maintain
good relations ("peerings") with the comparatively small 
number of major ISPs. Oh wait -- there are a variety of folks 
who are already specializing in doing that sort of thing --
it's just that most folks don't need to buy that sort of 
service (yet). 

Regards,

Joe St Sauver (joe at uoregon.edu)
University of Oregon Computing Center