Internet%20Messaging%20in%2060%20Minutes%20Terry%20Gray%20-University%20of%20Washington

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Internet Messaging in 60 MinutesTerry Gray
-University of Washington

• Policy Issues
• Mission Critical Messaging Goals
• Relevant Standards
• Standards Update
• Sample Architecture
• Designing for Reliability
• Designing for Scalability
• Mobility
• Security
• Trends
• Open Issues

2
Policy Issues

• Spam
• Harassment
• Privacy
• Legal discovery
• Records management
• Monitoring, Tracing requirements

3
Mission Critical Messaging Goals

• User view
• Availability/Reliability
• Interoperability
• Usability/Convenience
• Mobility
• Message security
• Administrator view
• Availability/Reliability
• Scalability
• Maintainability/Manageability
• Administrative Flexibility
• Infrastructure Security

4
Relevant Standards

• ESMTP -Mail transport
• NNTP -News transport
• RFC822 1036 -Header definitions
• MIME -Content encoding labeling
• DSNs -Delivery Service Notifications
• POP, IMAP -Remote mail access
• ACAP -Remote configuration access
• LDAP -Directory access
• S/MIME, PGP -Secure messaging
• SIEVE -Filtering

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Standards Update

• IETF activities updates, extensions
• Givens SMTP, POP, IMAP, LDAP
• Dueling S/MIME, Open PGP
• Upstarts ACAP, SIEVE
• Unstarted notification

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Sample Architecture

SMTP
Other Message Handlers
Incoming Mail Forwarder
NNTP
Delivery Filtering Agents
Option/ Config Store
Outgoing SMTP Server
Message Store
Directory Store
ACAP
SMTP
IMAP
LDAP
Mail Client
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Designing for Reliability

• Reduce "single points of failure"
• Redundancy
• Reduce size of "fault zones"
• "Horizontal Scaling"
• Graceful degradation, failure
• Time outs, retries, DSNs
• Reduce complexity, heterogeneity
• Avoid gateways use Internet standards

8
Designing for Scalability

• Big boxes vs. (lots of) little boxes
• Mapping user names to servers
• Mapping folder/newsgroup names to servers
• Client configuration

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Mobility the unlearned lesson

• Incoming folders
• Secondary folders
• Global address books
• Personal address books
• Configuration info
• Subscription lists
• Bookmarks
• Public key rings
• Private key rings
• Filter rules

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Security

• S/MIME will dominate for secure mail
• PKI issues
• of certs, kinds, revocation, escrow, archiving
• IMAP/POP security options
• SSL, K4, K5, OTP, CRAM-MD5
• SMTP security
• Attachment handling risks

11
Trends

• Mostly free clients
• WebMail
• Outlook/Exchange virus
• No SMTP relaying impact on mobile users
• LDAP HTTP for everything
• whither ACAP??
• Growing pressure for better filtering
• Will Sieve catch on??

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Open Issues

• Management tools
• Moving mailboxes among servers
• Knowing when things are broken
• X.509 certificate infrastructure
• Delivery filtering and responding
• List servers
• Attachment handling
• Delivery notification
• Efficient new mail notification
• Integrated open calendaring
• Intranets vs Internets Firewalls, VPNs
• Higher-Ed-specific issues, e.g. Labs

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References

• New Book Internet MessagingMarshall Rose and
  David StromPrentice HallISBN 0-13-978610-4
• All things IMAP www.imap.org