On Fri, Dec 05, 2003 at 03:29:54PM +1200, Franck Martin wrote: > Why SMTP servers do not negotiate to send an 8bit compressed stream > between themselves.
In addition to John Klensin's excellent summary I might notice that one more consideration would be the total amount of network capacity that is consumed by email. Looking at this backbone, all kinds of mail-related protocols (SMTP, POP3, IMAP, etc.) combined use less than 0.5% of total used capacity. (I do realize that in some environments, the fraction might be very different.)
