An Extensible Message Format for Delivery Status Notifications
RFC 3464

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Network Working Group                                           K. Moore
Request for Comments: 3464                       University of Tennessee
Obsoletes: 1894                                             G. Vaudreuil
Category: Standards Track                            Lucent Technologies
                                                            January 2003

    An Extensible Message Format for Delivery Status Notifications

Status of this Memo

   This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
   Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
   improvements.  Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
   Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
   and status of this protocol.  Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2003).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

   This memo defines a Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME)
   content-type that may be used by a message transfer agent (MTA) or
   electronic mail gateway to report the result of an attempt to deliver
   a message to one or more recipients.  This content-type is intended
   as a machine-processable replacement for the various types of
   delivery status notifications currently used in Internet electronic
   mail.

   Because many messages are sent between the Internet and other
   messaging systems (such as X.400 or the so-called "Local Area Network
   (LAN)-based" systems), the Delivery Status Notification (DSN)
   protocol is designed to be useful in a multi-protocol messaging
   environment.  To this end, the protocol described in this memo
   provides for the carriage of "foreign" addresses and error codes, in
   addition to those normally used in Internet mail.  Additional
   attributes may also be defined to support "tunneling" of foreign
   notifications through Internet mail.

Moore & Vaudreuil           Standards Track                     [Page 1]
RFC 3464             Delivery Status Notifications          January 2003

Table of Contents

   1. Introduction ....................................................3
     1.1 Purposes .....................................................3
     1.2 Requirements .................................................4
     1.3 Terminology ..................................................5
   2. Format of a Delivery Status Notification ........................7
     2.1 The message/delivery-status content-type .....................9
      2.1.1 General conventions for DSN fields ........................9
      2.1.2 "*-type" sub-fields .......................................9
      2.1.3 Lexical tokens imported from RFC 822 .....................10
     2.2 Per-Message DSN Fields ......................................11
      2.2.1 The Original-Envelope-Id field ...........................11
      2.2.2 The Reporting-MTA DSN field ..............................12
      2.2.3 The DSN-Gateway field ....................................13
      2.2.4 The Received-From-MTA DSN field ..........................14
      2.2.5 The Arrival-Date DSN field ...............................14
     2.3 Per-Recipient DSN fields ....................................14
      2.3.1 Original-Recipient field .................................15
      2.3.2 Final-Recipient field ....................................15
      2.3.3 Action field .............................................16
      2.3.4 Status field .............................................18
      2.3.5 Remote-MTA field .........................................19
      2.3.6 Diagnostic-Code field ....................................19
      2.3.7 Last-Attempt-Date field ..................................20
      2.3.8 final-log-id field .......................................20
      2.3.9 Will-Retry-Until field ...................................20
     2.4 Extension fields ............................................21
   3. Conformance and Usage Requirements .............................22
   4. Security Considerations ........................................23
     4.1 Forgery .....................................................23
     4.2 Confidentiality .............................................23
     4.3 Non-Repudiation .............................................25
   5. References .....................................................25
   6. Acknowledgments ................................................26
   Appendix A - Collected Grammar ....................................27
   Appendix B - Guidelines for Gatewaying DSNS .......................29
     Gatewaying from other mail systems to DSNs ......................29
     Gatewaying from DSNs to other mail systems ......................30
   Appendix C - Guidelines for Use of DSNS By Mailing List Exploders .30
   Appendix D - IANA Registration Forms for DSN Types ................31
     IANA registration form for address-type .........................32