On Thu, Oct 19, 2000 at 07:30:33PM -0700, Marty Fouts wrote:
> [snip]
> >
> > 3) some ISP systems yield 500 series errors with text:
> > "system is temporarily busy"
> > or something of that effect. Now THAT is really offensive
> > stupidity by the ISP software folks...
>
> <sigh> There is nothing in the SMTP RFCs that require any to be able to
> accept all email at all times. SMTP is *not* designed to be a reliable
> delivery mechanism, let alone a first-time reliable delivery mechanism.
> Refusal to accept email because the receiving system is under high load is
> well understood, commonly accepted, and even codified in implementation
> practice.
Yes, but the Specified Way to handle temporary problems is to
yield 400-series codes, or defer answering to the SMTP connections
at all.
Yielding 500 series replies means "this address is now and forever
invalid, don't try this again."
> In my opinion, you are doing a GoodThing(tm) by trying to weed broken
> addresses from the mailing list. But please don't demand from the internet
> behavior it wasn't designed to provide.
Seeing bad behaviour at 2 ISPs doesn't count to me as something
which majority of implementations are supposed to do.
> Marty
/Matti Aarnio
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