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Simple Mail Transfer Protocol extension for Message Transfer Priorities
draft-melnikov-smtp-priority-19

The information below is for an old version of the document.
Document Type
This is an older version of an Internet-Draft that was ultimately published as RFC 6710.
Authors Alexey Melnikov , Ken Carlberg
Last updated 2012-06-26 (Latest revision 2012-06-21)
RFC stream Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
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Stream WG state (None)
Document shepherd (None)
IESG IESG state Became RFC 6710 (Proposed Standard)
Consensus boilerplate Unknown
Telechat date (None)
Responsible AD Pete Resnick
Send notices to alexey.melnikov@isode.com, carlberg@g11.org.uk, draft-melnikov-smtp-priority@tools.ietf.org, barryleiba@computer.org
draft-melnikov-smtp-priority-19
Network Working Group                                        A. Melnikov
Internet-Draft                                                 Isode Ltd
Intended status: Standards Track                             K. Carlberg
Expires: December 23, 2012                                           G11
                                                           June 21, 2012

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol extension for Message Transfer Priorities
                    draft-melnikov-smtp-priority-19

Abstract

   This memo defines an extension to the SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer
   Protocol) service whereby messages are given a label to indicate
   preferential handling, to enable mail handling nodes to take this
   into account for onward processing.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.  The list of current Internet-
   Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on December 23, 2012.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2012 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
   2.  Conventions Used in This Document  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   3.  Definition of the Priority SMTP Extension  . . . . . . . . . .  4
   4.  Handling of messages received via SMTP . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
     4.1.  Handling of the MT-PRIORITY parameter by the receiving
           SMTP server  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
     4.2.  Relay of messages to other conforming SMTP servers . . . .  6
     4.3.  Relay of messages to non-conforming SMTP servers . . . . .  7
     4.4.  Mailing lists and Aliases  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
     4.5.  Gatewaying a message into a foreign environment  . . . . .  7
     4.6.  Interaction with DSN SMTP Extension  . . . . . . . . . . .  7
   5.  The Priority Service Extension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
     5.1.  Expedited Transfer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
     5.2.  Timely Delivery  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
   6.  Use of MT-PRIORITY with LMTP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
   7.  Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
   8.  Example  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
   9.  Deployment Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
     9.1.  Multiple MX records  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
     9.2.  Consistent priority handling policy  . . . . . . . . . . . 13
   10. IANA Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
   11. Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
   12. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
     12.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
     12.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
   Appendix A.  Mapping of MT-PRIORITY parameter values for
                Military Messaging  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
   Appendix B.  Mapping of MT-PRIORITY parameter values for MIXER . . 19
   Appendix C.  Mapping of National Security / Emergency
                Preparedness (NS/EP) Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
   Appendix D.  Possible implementation strategies  . . . . . . . . . 20
     D.1.  Probability  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
     D.2.  Preemption of sessions or transactions . . . . . . . . . . 21
     D.3.  Resource Allocation Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
   Appendix E.  Background on Design Choices  . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
   Appendix F.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

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1.  Introduction

   Where resources for switching or transfer of messages are constrained
   (e.g., bandwidth, round trip time, transition storage or processing
   capability) it is desirable to give preferential handling to some
   messages over others, according to their labeled priority.  This is
   particularly important during emergencies for first responders
   (Appendix C) and for environments such as military (Appendix A) and
   aviation (Appendix B) messaging, where messages have high operational
   significance, and the consequences of extraneous delay can be
   significant.

   In order for an SMTP receiver to be able to relay higher priority
   messages first, there needs to be a mechanism to communicate (during
   both Message Submission [RFC6409] and Message Transfer [RFC5321]) the
   priority of each message.  This specification defines this mechanism
   by specification of an SMTP [RFC5321] extension.

   In order to permit end-to-end use of this extension across email
   infrastructure that does not support it, a companion tunneling
   mechanism is defined in [PRIORITY-TUNNELING] through use of a new
   message header field [RFC5322].

   This extension provides services to some classes of users in networks
   with limited available bandwidth or long round trip times, when the
   actual message transfer over the network can create a significant
   portion of the overall message delivery time from a sender to a
   recipient, for example over a satellite or high frequency radio link.
   It is also useful in case of a Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) queue
   build-up due to the rate of incoming messages being higher than the
   rate of outgoing messages.  When neither of the two conditions
   mentioned above is true, the use of the MT-PRIORITY SMTP extension
   will not result in a better SMTP service to any user.  Also note that
   while this SMTP extension can help in improving delivery speed for
   higher priority messages, it does not provide any sort of guarantees
   that for two given messages with priorities M and N (M > N) submitted
   simultaneously the message with priority M will arrive earlier than
   the message with priority N. I.e. this extension calls for best
   effort to provide preferential processing.

   Besides the actions taken at the application level it can thus be
   important to deploy priority or precedence mechanisms offered by the
   network itself to ensure timely delivery of the emails.  Examples
   would be the use of DiffServ [RFC2474], RSVP [RFC2205] and the work-
   in-progress effort extension to RSVP that prioritizes reservations.

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2.  Conventions Used in This Document

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119] when they
   appear in ALL CAPS.  These words also appear in this document in
   lower case as plain English words, absent their normative meanings.

   The formal syntax use the Augmented Backus-Naur Form (ABNF) [RFC5234]
   notation including the core rules defined in Appendix B of RFC 5234
   [RFC5234].

   In examples, "C:" and "S:" indicate lines sent by the client and
   server respectively.  Line breaks that do not start with a new "C:"
   or "S:" exist for editorial reasons and are not a part of the
   protocol.

   This document uses the term "priority" specifically in relation to
   the internal treatment of a message by the server: messages with
   higher priorities may be given expedited handling, and those with
   lower priorities may be handled only as resources become available.

3.  Definition of the Priority SMTP Extension

   The Priority SMTP service extension is defined as follows:

   1.  The textual name of this extension is "Priority Message
       Handling".

   2.  The EHLO keyword value associated with this extension is "MT-
       PRIORITY".

   3.  The EHLO keyword has no parameters.  Parameters are reserved for
       possible future extensions and MUST be ignored by clients that
       don't understand them.

   4.  No additional SMTP verbs are defined by this extension.

   5.  One optional parameter ("MT-PRIORITY") is added to the MAIL FROM
       command.  The value associated with this parameter is a decimal
       integer number from -9 to 9 (inclusive) indicating the priority
       of the email message (See Appendix E for more details on why this
       range was selected).  The syntax of the MT-PRIORITY parameter is
       described by the <priority-value> ABNF non-terminal defined in
       Section 7.  Higher numbers mean higher priority.

   6.  The maximum length of a MAIL FROM command line is increased by 15
       octets by the possible addition of a space, the MT-PRIORITY

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       keyword and value.

   7.  The MT-PRIORITY extension is valid for the submission service
       [RFC6409] and LMTP [RFC2033].

4.  Handling of messages received via SMTP

   This section describes how a conforming SMTP server should handle any
   messages received via SMTP.

4.1.  Handling of the MT-PRIORITY parameter by the receiving SMTP server

   The following rules apply to SMTP transactions in a server that
   supports the MT-PRIORITY parameter:

   1.  If any of the associated <esmtp-value>s (as defined in Section
       4.1.2 of [RFC5321]) are not syntactically valid, or if there is
       more than one MT-PRIORITY parameter in a particular MAIL FROM
       command, the server MUST return an error, for example "501 syntax
       error in parameter" (with 5.5.2 Enhanced Status Code [RFC2034]
       [RFC5248]).

   2.  When inserting a Received header field as specified in Section
       4.4 of [RFC5321], the compliant MTA/MSA SHOULD include the
       "PRIORITY" clause whose syntax is specified in Section 7.

   3.  The received MT-PRIORITY parameter value SHOULD be logged as part
       of any logging of message transactions.

   4.  If the sending SMTP client specified the MT-PRIORITY parameter to
       the MAIL FROM command, then the value of this parameter is the
       message priority.

   5.  If no priority has been determined by the above, the server may
       use its normal policies to set the message's priority.  By
       default, each message has priority 0.

   The SMTP server MUST NOT allow "upgraded" (positive) priorities from
   untrusted (e.g. unauthenticated) or unauthorized sources.  (One
   example of an "unauthorized source" might be an SMTP sender which
   successfully authenticated using SMTP AUTH, but which is not
   explicitly authorized to use the SMTP MT-PRIORITY service.  In case
   of MTA-to-MTA transfer such authorization will usually be done as a
   bilateral agreement between two domains to honour priorities from
   each other.)  The server MAY, however, allow an untrusted source to
   lower its own message's priorities -- consider, for example, an email
   marketer that voluntarily sends its marketing messages at a negative
   priority.

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   The SMTP server MAY also alter the message priority (to lower or to
   raise it) in order to enforce some other site policy.  (Note that
   this also includes the case when the priority is not explicitly
   specified.)  For example an MSA might have a mapping table that
   assigns priorities to messages based on authentication credentials.

   If the SMTP server changes (lowers or raises) the priority of a
   message, it SHOULD use the X.7.TBD3 Enhanced Status Code [RFC2034] in
   its response to the MAIL FROM or in the final response to the DATA
   (or similar) command.  The human readable text part after the status
   code contains the new priority, followed by SP (ASCII space) and
   explanatory human readable text.

   Alternatively an SMTP server, which is an MSA, MAY reject a message
   based on the determined priority.  In such cases, the MSA SHOULD use
   450 or 550 reply code.  The corresponding Enhanced Status Code MUST
   be X.7.TBD1 [RFC2034] if the determined priority level is below the
   lowest priority currently acceptable for the receiving SMTP server.
   Note that this condition might be temporary.  In some environments,
   operational policies might permit periods of operation that relay
   only higher priority messages and reject lower priority ones.  Such
   handling choices need to be specified for that operational
   environment.

4.2.  Relay of messages to other conforming SMTP servers

   The following rules govern the behavior of a conforming MTA (in the
   role of an SMTP/LMTP client), when relaying a message which was
   received via the SMTP protocol, to an SMTP/LMTP server that supports
   the MT-PRIORITY extension:

   1.  A MT-PRIORITY parameter with the value determined by the
       procedure from Section 4.1 MUST appear in the MAIL FROM command
       issued when the message is relayed to an MTA/MDA which also
       supports the MT-PRIORITY extension.  (Note that due to site
       policy this value might be different from the value received from
       the SMTP client.  See Section 4.1 for details.  Also note that
       this value might be different than the priority level at which
       the MTA actually handles the request, due to the rounding
       described in Section 5.)

   2.  Further processing of the MT-PRIORITY parameter is described in
       Section 5.

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4.3.  Relay of messages to non-conforming SMTP servers

   The following rules govern the behavior of a conforming MTA (in the
   role of an SMTP/LMTP client), when relaying a message which was
   received via the SMTP protocol, to an SMTP/LMTP server that does not
   support the MT-PRIORITY extension:

   1.  The MTA relays the message without including the MT-PRIORITY
       parameter in the MAIL FROM command.

4.4.  Mailing lists and Aliases

   Several types of mechanisms exist to redirect or forward messages to
   alternative or multiple addresses [RFC5598].  Examples for this are
   aliases and mailing lists [RFC5321].

   If a message is subject to such processing, the Mediator node
   (Section 2.1 of [RFC5598]), SHOULD retain the MT-PRIORITY parameter
   value for all expanded and/or translated addresses.

4.5.  Gatewaying a message into a foreign environment

   The following rules govern the behavior of a conforming MTA, when
   gatewaying a message that was received via the SMTP protocol, into a
   foreign (non-SMTP) environment:

   1.  If the destination environment is unable to provide an equivalent
       of the MT-PRIORITY parameter, the conforming MTA SHOULD behave as
       if it is relaying to a non-conformant SMTP server (Section 4.3).

   2.  If the destination environment is capable of providing an
       equivalent of the MT-PRIORITY parameter, the conforming MTA
       SHOULD behave as if it is relaying to a conformant SMTP server
       (Section 4.2), converting the MT-PRIORITY value to the equivalent
       in the destination environment.

4.6.  Interaction with DSN SMTP Extension

   An MTA which also conforms to [RFC3461] that needs to generate a
   delivery report (whether for successful delivery or delayed/failed
   delivery) for a message it is processing SHOULD use the priority
   value of the message as the priority of the generated delivery
   report.

   For delivery reports received by an MTA, processing rules specified
   in Section 4.1 apply.  But note that while it might be tempting to
   handle all delivery reports (a.k.a.  DSNs) at their stated priority,
   under the assumption that failure notices need to get through quickly

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   in some situations, but such a policy creates an exposure to fake-DSN
   attacks if sources of DSNs can't be reliably established.

5.  The Priority Service Extension

   The priorities of messages affect the order the messages are
   transferred from the client to the server.  This is largely
   independent from the order in which they were originally received by
   the server.

   A message priority is a decimal integer in the range from -9 to 9
   (inclusive).  SMTP servers compliant with this specification are not
   required to support all 19 distinct priority levels (i.e. to treat
   each priority value as a separate priority), but they MUST implement
   at least the following 6 distinct priority levels: -4, -2, 0, 2, 4,
   9.  I.e. an implementation that only supports the 6 priority levels
   will internally round up a syntactically valid level that isn't
   supported to the next higher supported number.  For example, such an
   implementation will treat priority values below and including -4 as
   priority -4, priority -3 as priority -2, and all priorities starting
   from 5 are treated as priority 9.  An SMTP server MAY support more
   than 6 different priority levels.  Decision about which levels to
   support in addition to the 6 mentioned above is a local matter.  (See
   Section 9.2 for implementation/deployment considerations related to
   priority assignment policy.)

   Irrespectively of the number of distinct priority levels supported by
   the SMTP server, when relaying the message to the next hop or
   delivering it over LMTP, the SMTP server MUST communicate the
   priority value as determined in Section 4.1.

   Note: 19 possible priority levels are defined by this specification
   for extensibility.  For example, a particular implementation or
   deployment environment might need to provide finer-grained control
   over message transfer priorities.  In such a case, a server
   implementation might need an extra priority level beyond the 6 levels
   defined above.  See Appendix E for more details on why the range from
   -9 to 9 was selected.

   Some SMTP servers MAY impose additional maximum message size
   constraints for different message transfer priorities, for example
   messages with priority 6 might not be larger than 4 Kb.  If an SMTP
   server chooses to reject a message because it is too big for the
   determined priority, it SHOULD use 552 reply codes, together with the
   X.3.TBD2 Enhanced Status Code [RFC2034].

   Implementation Note: If the SMTP server also supports the SMTP SIZE
   extension [RFC1870] then an SMTP client can use both SIZE= and MT-

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   PRIORITY= parameters on the MAIL FROM command.  This allows the
   server to perform early rejection of a message in case the message
   size is too big for the specified priority, thus avoiding wasting
   bandwidth by transferring the message first and then rejecting it due
   to its size.

   The Priority Service Extension can be combined with DELIVERBY
   [RFC2852] SMTP service extension, however there is no requirement
   that both extensions are always implemented together.

5.1.  Expedited Transfer

   The main service provided by the Priority Message Handling SMTP
   Service Extension is expedited transfer of emails with a higher
   priority.  Therefore an SMTP client that has more than one email to
   send at a given time sends those with a higher priority before those
   with a lower one.  Additionally, the retry interval and/or default
   timeout before non-delivery report is generated MAY be lower (more
   aggressive) for messages of higher priority.  Lower retry intervals/
   default timeouts are controlled by the local MTA policy.

   Note that as this SMTP extension requires some sort of trust
   relationship between a sender and a receiver and thus some form of
   authentication (whether using SMTP AUTH, TLS, IP address whitelist,
   etc.), so senders using this SMTP extension will not be subject to
   greylisting [GREYLISTING], unless they are unauthorized to use this
   SMTP extension, due to an explicit policy decision or a
   misconfiguration error.  But note that in case of connection-level or
   SMTP HELO/HELO greylisting SMTP AUTH or TLS authentication options
   are not available to server.

   In order to make implementations of this extension easier, this SMTP
   extension only allows a single priority for all recipients of the
   same message.

   Within a priority level, the MTA uses its normal algorithm (the
   algorithm used in absence of this SMTP extension) for ordering for
   the messages.

   Two possible ways of implementing expedited transfer are described in
   more details in Appendix D.  Note that these sections don't describe
   all details and pitfalls for each implementation strategy.

5.2.  Timely Delivery

   An important constraint (usually associated with higher priority
   levels) is that messages with high priority have some delivery time
   constraints.  In some cases, higher priorities mean a shorter maximum

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   time allowed for delivery.

   Unextended SMTP does not offer a service for timely delivery, i.e.
   "deliver this message within X seconds from submission" service.  The
   "Deliver By SMTP Service Extension" (DELIVERBY Extension) defined in
   [RFC2852] is an example of an SMTP extension providing a service that
   can be used to implement timely delivery.  Note that SMTP DELIVERBY
   and SMTP MT-PRIORITY extensions are complimentary and can be used
   together (assuming the SMTP server they are talking to advertises
   support for both).  However note that use of the DELIVERBY extension
   alone does not guarantee any priority processing.  If the client is
   using both SMTP DELIVERBY and SMTP MT-PRIORITY at the same time,
   client can consider using smaller DELIVERBY timeouts for higher
   priority messages.

6.  Use of MT-PRIORITY with LMTP

   An LMTP server can advertise support for the MT-PRIORITY extension if
   it supports any combination of the following features:

   1.  The LMTP server is architected in such a way that it can deliver
       higher priority messages quicker than lower priority messages.

   2.  The LMTP server logs that MT-PRIORITY extension was used by the
       previous SMTP hop.

   3.  The LMTP server is exposing information about MT-PRIORITY
       extension to a delivery time filtering engine such as Sieve
       [RFC5228].

7.  Syntax

      priority-value = (["-"] NZDIGIT) / "0"
                       ; Allowed values are from -9 to 9 inclusive

      NZDIGIT = %x31-39
                ; "1"-"9"

      CFWS = <defined in RFC 5322>

      ; New "clause" that can be used in the Received header field
      Pri  = CFWS "PRIORITY" FWS priority-value
                ; Complies with the <Additional-Registered-Clauses>
                ; non-terminal syntax from RFC 5321.

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8.  Example

   The original submission (from MUA to MSA) might look like shown
   below.  Note that the example is also making use of the DELIVERBY
   [RFC2852] and DSN [RFC3461] SMTP extensions, even though there is no
   requirement that these other extensions are to be supported when the
   MT-PRIORITY SMTP extension is implemented.

        S: 220 example.com SMTP server here
        C: EHLO mua.example.com
        S: 250-example.com
        S: 250-AUTH STARTTLS
        S: 250-AUTH SCRAM-SHA-1 DIGEST-MD5
        S: 250-DSN
        S: 250-DELIVERBY
        S: 250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
        S: 250 MT-PRIORITY
        C: AUTH SCRAM-SHA-1
        [...authentication exchange...]
        S: 235 2.7.0 Authentication successful
        C: MAIL FROM:<eljefe@example.com> BY=125;R ENVID=QQ314159
            MT-PRIORITY=3
        S: 250 2.1.0 <eljefe@example.com> sender ok
        C: RCPT TO:<topbanana@example.net>
        S: 250 2.1.5 <topbanana@example.net> recipient ok
        C: RCPT TO:<Dana@Ivory.example.net> NOTIFY=SUCCESS,FAILURE
            ORCPT=rfc822;Dana@Ivory.example.net
        S: 250 2.1.5 <Dana@Ivory.example.net> recipient ok
        C: DATA
        S: 354 okay, send message
        C:  (message goes here)
        C: .
        S: 250 2.1.0 message accepted
        C: QUIT
        S: 221 2.0.0 goodbye

   In the above example the MUA has specified the priority 3 and the
   server has accepted it.  Another variant of the initial submission
   might look like:

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        S: 220 example.com SMTP server here
        C: EHLO mua.example.com
        S: 250-example.com
        S: 250-AUTH STARTTLS
        S: 250-AUTH SCRAM-SHA-1 DIGEST-MD5
        S: 250-DSN
        S: 250-DELIVERBY
        S: 250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
        S: 250 MT-PRIORITY
        C: AUTH SCRAM-SHA-1
        [...authentication exchange...]
        S: 235 2.7.0 Authentication successful
        C: MAIL FROM:<eljefe@example.com> BY=125;R ENVID=QQ314159
        S: 250 2.1.0 <eljefe@example.com> sender ok
        C: RCPT TO:<topbanana@example.net>
        S: 250 2.1.5 <topbanana@example.net> recipient ok
        C: RCPT TO:<Dana@Ivory.example.net> NOTIFY=SUCCESS,FAILURE
            ORCPT=rfc822;Dana@Ivory.example.net
        S: 250 2.1.5 <Dana@Ivory.example.net> recipient ok
        C: DATA
        S: 354 okay, send message
        C:  (message goes here)
        C: .
        S: 250 2.7.TBD3 3 is the new priority assigned to the message
        C: QUIT
        S: 221 2.0.0 goodbye

   [[RFC Editor, please fix TBD3 in the example above.]]  In the above
   example the MUA has not specified any priority, but the MSA has
   assigned priority 3 to the message.

   The MSA relays the message to the next MTA.

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        S: 220 example.net SMTP server here
        C: EHLO example.com
        S: 250-example.net
        S: 250-DSN
        S: 250-DELIVERBY
        S: 250 MT-PRIORITY
        C: MAIL FROM:<eljefe@example.com> BY=120;R ENVID=QQ314159
            MT-PRIORITY=3
        S: 250 <eljefe@example.com> sender ok
        C: RCPT TO:<topbanana@example.net>
        S: 250 <topbanana@example.net> recipient ok
        C: RCPT TO:<Dana@Ivory.example.net> NOTIFY=SUCCESS,FAILURE
            ORCPT=rfc822;Dana@Ivory.example.net
        S: 250 <Dana@Ivory.example.net> recipient ok
        C: DATA
        S: 354 okay, send message
        C:  (message goes here)
        C: .
        S: 250 message accepted
        C: QUIT
        S: 221 goodbye

   If the receiving SMTP server only supports 6 priority levels as
   described in Section 5, it will use the priority value 4 internally
   (the next supported priority higher or equal to 3) and will
   communicate the priority value 3 when relaying it to the next hop (if
   necessary).

9.  Deployment Considerations

9.1.  Multiple MX records

   If multiple DNS MX records are used to specify multiple servers for a
   domain in section 5 of [RFC5321], it is strongly advised that all of
   them support the MT-PRIORITY extension and handles priorities in
   exactly the same way.  If one or more servers behave differently in
   this respect, then it is strongly suggested that none of the servers
   support the MT-PRIORITY extension.  Otherwise, unexpected differences
   in message delivery speed or even rejections can happen during
   temporary or permanent failures, which users might perceive as
   serious reliability issues.

9.2.  Consistent priority handling policy

   This document allows up to 19 distinct priority values.  In a
   particular operating environment independent originators need to
   assign priority values according to roughly the same criteria, so
   that the same "high priority message" doesn't get associated with the

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   value 3 for one sender and with the value 5 for another, as such
   messages might end up getting different preferential treatment when
   it was not the intent.

   In order to achieve consistent behaviour in an operating environment,
   the priority assignment policy (together with restrictions on maximum
   message sized for each priority (if any), default timeouts, etc.)
   should be documented for the environment.  The default priority
   assignment policy is specified in Appendix A.  Two other anticipated
   policies are specified in Appendix B and Appendix C.

   Moreover, all MSAs/MTAs/MDAs within any given Administrative
   Management Domain has to be configured to use the same priority
   related policy.  Otherwise a differently configured MSA/MTA/MDA can
   expose the whole domain to possible attacks, like injection of hight
   priority fake-DSN.

   When this SMTP extension is deployed across multiple cooperating
   Administrative Domains, such Administrative Domains need to use the
   same or at least compatible policies.  Again, differences in policies
   (for example differences in how users are authenticated or
   differences in how priorities are handled) can expose an
   Administrative Domain to weaknesses in a partner domain.

10.  IANA Considerations

   This specification requests IANA to add the MT-PRIORITY SMTP
   extension to the "SMTP Service Extensions" registry (in
   http://www.iana.org/assignments/mail-parameters).  This extension is
   suitable for the Submit port.

   This specification requests IANA to add the following new Received
   header field clause to the "Additional-registered-clauses" sub-
   registry (in http://www.iana.org/assignments/mail-parameters) to help
   with tracing email messages delivered using the MT-PRIORITY SMTP
   extension:

   Clause name: PRIORITY
   Description: Records the value of the MT-PRIORITY parameter specified
   in the MAIL FROM command
   Syntax of the value: See Section 7 of RFCXXXX
   Reference: [[anchor13: RFCXXXX]]

   This specification requests IANA to add the following Enumerated
   Status Codes to the "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) Enhanced
   Status Codes" registry established by [RFC5248] (in http://
   www.iana.org/assignments/smtp-enhanced-status-codes/
   smtp-enhanced-status-codes.xml):

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   1.

       Code:  X.7.TBD1

       Sample Text:  Priority Level is too low

       Associated basic status code:  450, 550 (other 4XX or 5XX codes
          are allowed)

       Description:  The specified priority level is below the lowest
          priority acceptable for the receiving SMTP server.  This
          condition might be temporary, for example the server is
          operating in a mode where only higher priority messages are
          accepted for transfer and delivery, while lower priority
          messages are rejected.

       Reference:  RFC XXXX

       Submitter:  A. Melnikov

       Change controller:  IESG

   2.

       Code:  X.3.TBD2

       Sample Text:  Message is too big for the specified priority

       Associated basic status code:  552 (other 4XX or 5XX codes are
          allowed)

       Description:  The message is too big for the specified priority.
          This condition might be temporary, for example the server is
          operating in a mode where only higher priority messages below
          certain size are accepted for transfer and delivery.

       Reference:  RFC XXXX

       Submitter:  A. Melnikov

       Change controller:  IESG

   3.

       Code:  X.3.TBD3

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       Sample Text:  Requested priority was changed

       Associated basic status code:  250 or 251

       Description:  The message was accepted for relay/delivery, but
          the requested priority (possibly the implied default) was not
          honoured.  The human readable text after the status code
          contains the new priority, followed by SP (space) and
          explanatory human readable text.

       Reference:  RFC XXXX

       Submitter:  A. Melnikov

       Change controller:  IESG

11.  Security Considerations

   Message Submission Agents ought to only accept message transfer
   priorities from users (or only certain groups of such users) who are
   authenticated and authorized in some way that's acceptable to the
   MSA.  As part of this policy, they can also restrict maximum priority
   values that different groups of users can request, and can override
   the priority values specified by MUAs.

   Similarly, MTAs ought to only accept message transfer priorities from
   senders (or only certain groups of such senders) who are
   authenticated and authorized in some way that's acceptable to the
   MTA.  As part of this policy, they can also restrict maximum priority
   values that different groups of senders can request, and can override
   the priority values specified by them.

   In the absence of the policy enforcement mentioned above an SMTP
   server (whether an MSA or an MTA) implementing this SMTP extension
   might be susceptible to a Denial of Service attack.  For example,
   malicious clients (MUAs/MSAs/MTAs) can try to abuse this feature by
   always requesting Priority 9.

12.  References

12.1.  Normative References

   [RFC2033]             Myers, J., "Local Mail Transfer Protocol",
                         RFC 2033, October 1996.

   [RFC2034]             Freed, N., "SMTP Service Extension for
                         Returning Enhanced Error Codes", RFC 2034,
                         October 1996.

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   [RFC2119]             Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to
                         Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
                         March 1997.

   [RFC3461]             Moore, K., "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
                         (SMTP) Service Extension for Delivery Status
                         Notifications (DSNs)", RFC 3461, January 2003.

   [RFC5321]             Klensin, J., "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol",
                         RFC 5321, October 2008.

   [RFC5322]             Resnick, P., Ed., "Internet Message Format",
                         RFC 5322, October 2008.

   [RFC5234]             Crocker, D. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for
                         Syntax Specifications: ABNF", STD 68, RFC 5234,
                         January 2008.

   [RFC5248]             Hansen, T. and J. Klensin, "A Registry for SMTP
                         Enhanced Mail System Status Codes", BCP 138,
                         RFC 5248, June 2008.

   [RFC6409]             Gellens, R. and J. Klensin, "Message Submission
                         for Mail", STD 72, RFC 6409, November 2011.

12.2.  Informative References

   [RFC5598]             Crocker, D., "Internet Mail Architecture",
                         RFC 5598, July 2009.

   [RFC1845]             Crocker, D. and N. Freed, "SMTP Service
                         Extension for Checkpoint/Restart", RFC 1845,
                         September 1995.

   [RFC1870]             Klensin, J., Freed, N., and K. Moore, "SMTP
                         Service Extension for Message Size
                         Declaration", STD 10, RFC 1870, November 1995.

   [RFC2156]             Kille, S., "MIXER (Mime Internet X.400 Enhanced
                         Relay): Mapping between X.400 and RFC 822/
                         MIME", RFC 2156, January 1998.

   [RFC2205]             Braden, B., Zhang, L., Berson, S., Herzog, S.,
                         and S. Jamin, "Resource ReSerVation Protocol
                         (RSVP) -- Version 1 Functional Specification",
                         RFC 2205, September 1997.

   [RFC2474]             Nichols, K., Blake, S., Baker, F., and D.

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                         Black, "Definition of the Differentiated
                         Services Field (DS Field) in the IPv4 and IPv6
                         Headers", RFC 2474, December 1998.

   [RFC2852]             Newman, D., "Deliver By SMTP Service
                         Extension", RFC 2852, June 2000.

   [RFC4190]             Carlberg, K., Brown, I., and C. Beard,
                         "Framework for Supporting Emergency
                         Telecommunications Service (ETS) in IP
                         Telephony", RFC 4190, November 2005.

   [RFC4412]             Schulzrinne, H. and J. Polk, "Communications
                         Resource Priority for the Session Initiation
                         Protocol (SIP)", RFC 4412, February 2006.

   [RFC5228]             Guenther, P. and T. Showalter, "Sieve: An Email
                         Filtering Language", RFC 5228, January 2008.

   [PRIORITY-TUNNELING]  Melnikov, A. and K. Carlberg, "Tunneling of
                         SMTP Message Transfer Priorities",
                         draft-melnikov-smtp-priority-tunneling-00 (work
                         in progress), 2012.

   [ACP123]              CCEB, "Common Messaging strategy and
                         procedures", ACP 123, May 2009.

   [STANAG-4406]         NATO, "STANAG 4406 Edition 2: Military Message
                         Handling System", STANAG 4406, March 2005.

   [GREYLISTING]         Kucherawy, M. and D. Crocker, "Email
                         Greylisting: An Applicability Statement for
                         SMTP", draft-ietf-appsawg-greylisting (work in
                         progress), April 2012.

   [RFC4125]             Le Faucheur, F. and W. Lai, "Maximum Allocation
                         Bandwidth Constraints Model for Diffserv-aware
                         MPLS Traffic Engineering", RFC 4125, June 2005.

   [RFC4127]             Le Faucheur, F., "Russian Dolls Bandwidth
                         Constraints Model for Diffserv-aware MPLS
                         Traffic Engineering", RFC 4127, June 2005.

   [RFC6401]             Le Faucheur, F., Polk, J., and K. Carlberg,
                         "RSVP Extensions for Admission Priority",
                         RFC 6401, October 2011.

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Appendix A.  Mapping of MT-PRIORITY parameter values for Military
             Messaging

   Military Messaging as specified in ACP 123 [ACP123] (also specified
   in STANAG 4406 [STANAG-4406]) defines 6 priority ("precedence")
   values.  While ACP 123/STANAG 4406 allow for 32 different priority
   levels (16 levels are reserved for NATO and additional 16 are
   reserved for national use), only 6 are in use in practice.  Where
   SMTP is used to support military messaging, the following mappings
   SHOULD be used.

            Recommended mapping of MT-PRIORITY values for MMHS

                      +----------------+-----------+
                      | Priority value | MMHS name |
                      +----------------+-----------+
                      |       -4       | Deferred  |
                      |       -2       | Routine   |
                      |        0       | Priority  |
                      |        2       | Immediate |
                      |        4       | Flash     |
                      |        6       | Override  |
                      +----------------+-----------+

                                  Table 1

Appendix B.  Mapping of MT-PRIORITY parameter values for MIXER

   MIXER [RFC2156] defines the Priority header field with 3 values.
   Where SMTP is used to support MIXER messaging, the following mappings
   SHOULD be used.

            Recommended mapping of MT-PRIORITY values for MIXER

               +----------------------+-------------------+
               | MIXER Priority value | MT-PRIORITY value |
               +----------------------+-------------------+
               | non-urgent           | -4                |
               | normal               | 0                 |
               | urgent               | 4                 |
               +----------------------+-------------------+

                                  Table 2

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Appendix C.  Mapping of National Security / Emergency Preparedness
             (NS/EP) Values

   There are several forms of communication systems used during an
   emergency or disaster.  The most well known form involves the many-
   to-one model of the general public contacting a public safety access
   point via 911/999/112 calls through the public telephone network.
   Typically, these calls do not require authorization, nor do they
   invoke any prioritization.

   Another form of emergency communications involves a set of authorized
   users or nodes that use prioritized services to help established and
   continue communication given limited available resources.  [RFC4190]
   includes descriptions of several systems that have been developed to
   support National Security / Emergency Preparedness (NS/EP).  These
   deployed systems require a form of authentication and have focused on
   prioritization of telephony based services.  They have also been
   designed as a binary form (on/off) of signaled priority
   communications.

   [RFC4412] includes examples of a more expansive view of NS/EP
   communications in which priority migrates from a single on/off bit
   value to one that comprises five priority values.  This is shown in
   the cases of the ETS and WPS Namespaces.  Given a lack of pre-
   existing NS/EP values assigned for email, we follow the paradigm of
   the ETS and WPS Namespaces and recommend five ascending values shown
   in the table below.

                   +----------------+------------------+
                   | Priority value | Relational Order |
                   +----------------+------------------+
                   |       -2       | Lowest Priority  |
                   |        0       | ----------       |
                   |        2       | ----------       |
                   |        4       | ----------       |
                   |        6       | Highest Priority |
                   +----------------+------------------+

   As in the case of Appendix A and Appendix B, the gap in numeric
   values listed in this table provides room for future changes to
   expand the set of priorities at a future date, or in a local and non-
   standardized manner.

Appendix D.  Possible implementation strategies

   This appendix suggest some implementation strategies to implement the
   SMTP extension defined in this document.  The list is not exhaustive.

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   This appendix and its subsections are Informative.

D.1.  Probability

   As the name suggests, probability involves increasing the chances of
   obtaining resources without adversely affecting previously
   established connections.  One example would involve requesting
   resources set aside for specific priority levels.  If these
   additional resources are exhausted, then the desired connection is
   denied.  Queues, new timers, or combinations thereof can be used to
   facilitate the higher priority requests, but the key is that
   mechanisms focus on increasing the probability of message transfer.

D.2.  Preemption of sessions or transactions

   Preemption is a type of action that focuses only on a comparison of
   priorities to determine if previously established transactions need
   to be displaced in favor of higher priority requests.  If no
   additional connection is possible, the client aborts a running
   session for emails with lower priority no later than directly after
   the current transaction.  The client even can interrupt an active
   transaction and ought to do so, if other constraints such as delivery
   time (as specified in the DELIVERBY SMTP extension [RFC2852]) would
   be violated for the email with higher priority.  When interrupting an
   active transaction, the client ought to take the total message size
   and the size of the transferred portion of the message being
   interrupted into consideration.  This preliminary termination of
   sessions or transactions is called preemption.

   If preemption of running transactions occurs, the client needs to
   choose a transaction with the lowest priority currently processed.

   If the client has an option (i.e. it is supported by the next hop
   MTA) to interrupt transactions in a way that it can be restarted at
   the interruption point later, it ought to deploy it.  An example for
   a mechanism providing such a service is the "SMTP Service Extension
   for Checkpoint/Restart" defined in [RFC1845].

   If a client opts for the preemption of sessions instead of
   transactions, it needs to preempt the next session that reaches the
   end of a transaction.

D.3.  Resource Allocation Models

   Adding prioritization to a design moves the subject away from
   strictly best effort (and a first-come-first-served model) to one
   that includes admission control and resource allocation models.  Over
   the years, a variety of work has been done within the IETF in

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   specifying resource allocations models.  Examples include the Maximum
   Allocation Model [RFC4125], the Russian Dolls Model [RFC4127], and
   the Priority Bypass Model (Appendix A.3 of [RFC6401]).

   While we recognize that these various models have been designed for
   other protocols (i.e., MPLS and RSVP), an understanding of their
   design characteristics may be beneficial in considering future
   implementations of a priority SMTP service.

   In cases where the processing of high priority messages by an MTA is
   not considered negligible and exceeds engineered expectations, then
   operators managing that MTA may be notified in some form (e.g.,
   pushed alarm, polled status).

Appendix E.  Background on Design Choices

   This Section provides some background on design choices made during
   development of the MT-PRIORITY SMTP extension.

   The priority applies per message, rather than per recipient in order
   to keep the protocol simpler, and because of the expectation that it
   will be uncommon to need different priorities for different
   recipients on the same message.  In cases where that is necessary, it
   can always be achieved by sending separate messages with the same
   content, segregating the recipients by desired message priority.

   The choice of the priority range -9 to 9 (as opposed to, say, 1 to 6,
   or 0 to 9) was made after taking the following into consideration:

   1.  Clearly, having multiple priority levels is the whole point of
       this extension.  Existing implementations of similar
       functionality in MTAs are already using three levels.  One of the
       use cases motivating this extension requires 6 levels.  So at
       least 6 different values are required.

   2.  During discussions of this extension, several different use cases
       were suggested that required differing numbers of priority
       levels.  Defining just the 6 priority levels needed in item 1,
       above, would limit the extensibility for possible future use
       cases.  Therefore, this document is defining a wider range, which
       allows implementations and deployments to add higher or lower
       priority levels and to insert additional priority levels between
       the recommended set of 6.  This avoids the need to further extend
       this extension just to have a few more priority levels.

   3.  It seems natural to use 0 for the "normal" or default priority,
       rather than picking some non-zero number and having the
       priorities go up or down from there.  This way, negative numbers

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       always represent priorities that are lower than normal, with
       positive numbers as higher priorities.

Appendix F.  Acknowledgements

   This document copies lots of text from
   draft-schmeing-smtp-priorities-04.txt and
   draft-schmeing-smtp-priorities-05.txt.  So the authors of this
   document would like to acknowledge contributions made by the authors
   of draft-schmeing-smtp-priorities: Michael Schmeing and Jan-Wilhelm
   Brendecke.

   Many thanks for input provided by Steve Kille, David Wilson, John
   Klensin, Dave Crocker, Graeme Lunt, Alessandro Vesely, Barry Leiba,
   Bill McQuillan, Murray Kucherawy, SM, Glenn Parsons, Pete Resnick,
   Chris Newman, Ned Freed and Claudio Allocchio.

   Special thanks to Barry Leiba for agreeing to shepherd this document.

Authors' Addresses

   Alexey Melnikov
   Isode Ltd
   5 Castle Business Village
   36 Station Road
   Hampton, Middlesex  TW12 2BX
   UK

   EMail: Alexey.Melnikov@isode.com

   Ken Carlberg
   G11
   1601 Clarendon Blvd, #203
   Arlington, VA  22209
   USA

   EMail: carlberg@g11.org.uk

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