soBGP deployment

Tue May 24 01:49:15 UTC 2005

At 3:24 PM -0400 2005-05-23, Daniel Golding wrote:

>  A bizarre assertion was made that only a "few" are implementing SPF, which
>  is demonstrably untrue.

	It depends on whether you're talking about "few" relative to the 
number of mail systems in the world, or "few" relative to the number 
of users served by those mail systems.

	If you're talking about users, then all you have to do is 
implement SPF at a few large sites like AOL, where they don't support 
forwarding and therefore they don't care if they break forwarding, 
where they want to force everyone to use their outbound mail relay 
servers anyway, etc....  Do that, and you've got a "majority".

	If you're talking about mail systems, it's a whole different 
picture.  Setting up TLSSMTP or SMTPAUTH is non-trivial, even for 
experienced admins.  Indeed, many experienced admins may own their 
own domains, but not run their own machines.  Even if the server side 
is capable of supporting TLSSMTP and/or SMTPAUTH, they may well be 
using clients which are not capable of doing so, or not capable of 
doing so interoperably with the server side.  Much, much more 
difficult to get large numbers of installations.

	Penetration of SPF is pretty low, and it's likely to stay that 
way for the foreseeable future.  The problems with SPF are pretty 
basic, and I don't see them being eliminated any time soon with a 
casual wave of your royal hand.

>                        This obsession with perfection will (as usual) result
>  in exactly no progress. Folks need to be willing to get 70% of the benefit
>  for 10% of the effort.

	And if twelve people told you that you'd have to implement twelve 
different incompatible systems, and each of them would give you a 
different 70% of the benefit for 10% of the effort (but only if they 
were the only solution implemented), what would you do?

	The IETF has taught us that multiple incompatible partial 
solutions is not a particularly desirable outcome.  That way lies 
madness.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad at stop.mail-abuse.org>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

   SAGE member since 1995.  See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.