>>>> On the other hand, if all you want is hand off mail to your isp, you
>>>> don't even need a fully fledged MTA like sendmail or postfix; you could
>>>> get a minimalist SEP MTA from the ports and use that.

>>> I'm sure that SEP does not refer to Douglas Adams' "Somebody Elses
>>> Problem", but what does it stand for?

Actually that is exactly what it stands for. At least I've always taken it that way.

I remember seeing the expression used on the exim mailing list in the 1990s among mail administrators. SMTP, among other things, is about who has to take responsibility for trying to get a message delivered. Once your server says "250 OK" you have responsibility for it. But if you reject the message any time before than, it is SEP. Where this plays a role in this discussion is that when mail has a forged envelope sender address, you don't want to accept responsibility for the message and then be obligated to generate a bounce message which you would then have to send to the forged address (backscatter). Instead you want to "reject early, reject often". That also helps push the problem back toward those who can do something about it. For example (remember, I'm thinking about 10 years ago) is the server trying to push the forged mail is an open relay, it is far better to have the owners of that open relay have to deal with all of the undeliverable bounces than for innocents further down stream.

-j

-- Jeffrey Goldberg http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/ I rarely read top-posted, over-quoted or HTML posts My Reply-To address is valid.