[e2e] Fwd: Camel's nose in the tent

[David P. Reed]

At 07:29 PM 8/10/01 -0400, John Day wrote:
>Actually, my understanding of SMTP is that it is intended to be as much an 
>application relay as X.400?  No.  I would agree.  The ends were the ends 
>of a transport layer connection, i.e. TCP.

The end-to-end argument applies at each protocol layer, not just the 
transport layer.  Both the rationale for it, and the explicit description 
we wrote in our paper apply at application layers as well.

You could claim that an SMTP connection is only one hop.  But each relay 
step is specified in the protocol, and the UA's at source and destination 
are the ends.

In regard to reflectors and listserv's, they are ends as far as SMTP is 
concerned - because they are UA's as far as SMTP is concerned.



- David
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