Re: Email delivery protocols / methods.

[Paul Koning via cctalk]

> On Jul 5, 2019, at 5:05 PM, Grant Taylor via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> 
> wrote:
> 
> Here's pot stirrer for a holiday Friday afternoon:
> 
> How many different protocols / methods can we collectively come up with for 
> how email can be transferred?
> 
> I'm primarily thinking about between servers (MTA-to-MTA).  But I'm also 
> willing to accept servers and clients (MTA-to-MUA).  Where you can / could 
> run at least one server yourself.

There's the MAIL-11 protocol (end to end, no MTAs) and the DECmail protocol 
which may be some OSI-like thing, I'm not sure anymore.

For real strangeness there is the PLATO mail protocol, which involves writing 
the mail into files, which are then extracted from PLATO into the OS file 
system by a periodic batch job, then sent to another system via file transfer 
(FTP or a predecessor), then pushed into the PLATO file system, then picked up 
by a mail agent at that end.  Ugh.

        paul