An Extensible Message Format for Message Tracking Responses
RFC 3886

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Network Working Group                                          E. Allman
Request for Comments: 3886                                Sendmail, Inc.
Updates: 3463                                             September 2004
Category: Standards Track

      An Extensible Message Format for Message Tracking Responses

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 (2004).

Abstract

   Message Tracking is expected to be used to determine the status of
   undelivered e-mail upon request.  Tracking is used in conjunction
   with Delivery Status Notifications (DSN) and Message Disposition
   Notifications (MDN); generally, a message tracking request will be
   issued only when a DSN or MDN has not been received within a
   reasonable timeout period.

   This memo defines a MIME content-type for message tracking status in
   the same spirit as RFC 3464, "An Extensible Message Format for
   Delivery Status Notifications".  It is to be issued upon a request as
   described in "Message Tracking Query Protocol".  This memo defines
   only the format of the status information.  An extension to SMTP to
   label messages for further tracking and request tracking status is
   defined in a separate memo.

Allman                      Standards Track                     [Page 1]
RFC 3886                Message/Tracking-Status           September 2004

1.  Introduction

   Message Tracking is expected to be used to determine the status of
   undelivered e-mail upon request.  Tracking is used in conjunction
   with Delivery Status Notifications (DSN) [RFC-DSN-SMTP] and Message
   Disposition Notifications (MDN) [RFC-MDN]; generally, a message
   tracking request will be issued only when a DSN or MDN has not been
   received within a reasonable timeout period.

   This memo defines a MIME [RFC-MIME] content-type for message tracking
   status in the same spirit as RFC 3464, "An Extensible Message Format
   for Delivery Status Notifications" [RFC-DSN-STAT].  It is to be
   issued upon a request as described in "Message Tracking Query
   Protocol" [RFC-MTRK-MTQP].  This memo defines only the format of the
   status information.  An extension to SMTP [RFC-ESMTP] to label
   messages for further tracking and request tracking status is defined
   in a separate memo [RFC-MTRK-SMTPEXT].

2.  Other Documents and Conformance

   The model used for Message Tracking is described in [RFC-MTRK-MODEL].

   Message tracking is intended for use as a "last resort" mechanism.
   Normally, Delivery Status Notifications (DSNs) [RFC-DSN-SMTP] and
   Message Disposition Notifications (MDNs) [RFC-MDN] would provide the
   primary delivery status.  Only if no response is received from either
   of these mechanisms would Message Tracking be used.

   This document is based on [RFC-DSN-STAT].  Sections 1.3
   (Terminology), 2.1.1 (General conventions for DSN fields), 2.1.2
   ("*-type" subfields), and 2.1.3 (Lexical tokens imported from RFC
   822) of [RFC-DSN-STAT] are included into this document by reference.
   Other sections are further incorporated as described herein.

   Syntax notation in this document conforms to [RFC-ABNF].

   The following lexical tokens, defined in [RFC-MSGFMT], are used in
   the ABNF grammar for MTSNs: atom, CHAR, comment, CR, CRLF, DIGIT, LF,
   linear-white-space, SPACE, text.  The date-time lexical token is
   defined in [RFC-HOSTREQ].

   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 RFC 2119 [RFC-
   KEYWORDS].

Allman                      Standards Track                     [Page 2]
RFC 3886                Message/Tracking-Status           September 2004

3.  Format of a Message Tracking Status Notification

   A Message Tracking Status Notification (MTSN) is intended to be
   returned as the body of a Message Tracking request [RFC-MTRK-MTQP].
   The actual body MUST be a multipart/related [RFC-RELATED] with type
   parameter of "message/tracking-status"; each subpart MUST be of type
   "message/tracking-status" as described herein.  The multipart/related
   body can include multiple message/tracking-status parts if an MTQP
   server chains requests to the next server; see [RFC-MTRK-MODEL] and
   [RFC-MTRK-MTQP] for more information about chaining.

3.1.  The message/tracking-status content-type

   The message/tracking-status content-type is defined as follows:

   MIME type name:           message
   MIME subtype name:        tracking-status
   Optional parameters:      none