Objective of Meeting
Summary
Next Steps

 

Sponsoring Forum

Messaging

Messaging Forum:
Big Picture Architecture for Email

Objective of Meeting

This meeting was held in response to a call from the previous meeting of the Forum (in July 2004) for a big picture architecture as a context for work in the Forum.

The objectives of this session were

  1. To scope the problem
  2. To review similar activities in other organizations
  3. To agree on a plan of action

Summary

It was agreed to establish a relatively narrow scope for the exercise, to enable it to be completed in a reasonable period of time. It will subsequently be possible to extend the work into other areas.

Scoping statement:

  • The internet (SMTP)-based email system
  • Email as a medium for inter-personal communication
  • Architecture to counter unsolicited email (Spam), which represents the major pain point in the industry

The IAB (Internet Architecture Board) recently held an Architecture Summit with invited submissions from industry experts on a wide variety of topics. The objective was to advise the IAB on future activities and priorities. Quotes from people who attended the event:

  • "Spam was a major distorting factor"
  • "Discussions trying to do architecture work were not very productive"

Dave Crocker of Brandenburg InternetWorking has produced a baseline architecture describing how the existing Internet mail system operates in an attempt to promote a shared framework and vocabulary.

It was agrreed that:

  1. The Messaging Forum will adopt Dave Crocker's Architecture document as a baseline for future work. This is currently written in IETF RFC format and needs some changes for a more general audience.
  2. The Messaging Forum will build an architecture for Spam control on top of this baseline document. The target is to have a draft available by the next meeting in January 2005.

Next Steps

  • Develop a Guide to Internet E-mail Architecture to which Dave Crocker's architecture document can be added as an appendix and adopt (through formal review) as the baseline for further architecture work in the Messaging Forum.
  • Develop an Architecture for Controlling Spam. Target is to have the first draft available for the meeting in January 2005.
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