Re: Why is SMTP still relevant?

Ron Johnson <ron.l.johnson@xxxxxxx> wrote in
news:fnwdi.147873$NK5.83353@xxxxxxxxxxxx:

On 06/18/07 04:39, John Wallace wrote:
"Ron Johnson" <ron.l.johnson@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:p50di.582903$2Q1.250900@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 06/16/07 20:04, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
[snip]
So, what is the technological solution?
Hardened operating systems and some sort of email-account
pre-registration with organizations that issue web-of-trust PGP/GPG
digital signatures. Every user would need to think of a strong
passphrase before being allowed to send email. All emails would
have to be signed. Using computers and the internet would become
*much* more complicated and usage would plummet.

Computers would then only be used by geeks and other sundry
propeller-heads and technophiles. Life will be good again!

--
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA USA

(long post, sorry)

You just (almost) described some of the attributes of an X.400
standards-based secure email system, at least as I used to understand
them some considerable time ago. Apart from the complexity bit of
course; internal complexity does not necessarily have to be exposed
to the user or (mostly) to the administrator (VMS is a prime
example).

[snip]

Anyone care to enlighten me as to why a "paradigm shift" (ouch) to
X.400 isn't the answer and band-aids are? I do realise that such a
shift wouldn't take place overnight and that interoperability tools
would be needed (which is fine, they existed years ago). I also
realise there is a whole SMTP-dependent ecosystem out there, from
mailserver vendors to band-aid vendors to ISPs to spammers and more,
whose interests will not be best served if the underlying mail system
suddenly loses the vulnerabilities on which their commercial
activities depend, and there are staff who won't want their SMTP
skills to become irrelevant, but is this really the main reason SMTP
survives well beyond its "use by" date? There's also the "not
invented here" factor, X.400 didn't come from the Internerd/RFC
community, it came from those nasty telco folks, but twenty-odd years
later doesn't the reality look like the telcos may have been the ones
going the right way, maybe they were just a bit before the cheap
computing power (and bandwidth) was available?

Installed base. There are a *lot* of SMTP servers out there.


No problem. Use both methods until you're satisfied that SMTP isn't
providing sufficient value after including the costs of filtering it,
then you're dealing exclusively with the improved system.
.

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