Use of SRV Records for Locating Email Submission/Access Services
RFC 6186
Document | Type |
RFC - Proposed Standard
(March 2011; No errata)
Was draft-daboo-srv-email (individual in app area)
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Author | Cyrus Daboo | ||
Last updated | 2015-10-14 | ||
Stream | IETF | ||
Formats | plain text html pdf htmlized bibtex | ||
Reviews | |||
Stream | WG state | (None) | |
Document shepherd | No shepherd assigned | ||
IESG | IESG state | RFC 6186 (Proposed Standard) | |
Consensus Boilerplate | Unknown | ||
Telechat date | |||
Responsible AD | Alexey Melnikov | ||
Send notices to | ned.freed@mrochek.com, chris.newman@sun.com |
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) C. Daboo Request for Comments: 6186 Apple Inc. Updates: 1939, 3501 March 2011 Category: Standards Track ISSN: 2070-1721 Use of SRV Records for Locating Email Submission/Access Services Abstract This specification describes how SRV records can be used to locate email services. Status of This Memo This is an Internet Standards Track document. This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has received public review and has been approved for publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741. Information about the current status of this document, any errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6186. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2011 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. Daboo Standards Track [Page 1] RFC 6186 SRV for Email March 2011 Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2. Conventions Used in This Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3. SRV Service Labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3.1. Email Submission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3.2. IMAP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3.3. POP3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3.4. Priority for Domain Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 4. Guidance for MUAs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 5. Guidance for Service Providers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 7. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 8. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 8.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 8.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 1. Introduction Internet email protocols include SMTP [RFC5321], IMAP [RFC3501], and POP3 [RFC1939]. IMAP and POP3 are both message store access protocols used by message store user agents (MUAs) to manipulate email messages after delivery. [RFC4409] defines a "profile" of the SMTP service that is specifically used for message submission. MUAs are expected to submit messages to mail submission agents (MSAs) using this approach. [RFC2782] defines a DNS-based service discovery protocol that has been widely adopted as a means of locating particular services within a local area network and beyond, using DNS SRV resource records (RRs). [RFC5321] specifies how to use DNS MX RRs to locate SMTP services for a domain. However, MUAs are expected to use the submission protocol defined in [RFC4409], which does not use MX records. Typically MUAs have required users to enter a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) and port information for the services they need. This is not ideal as the way in which server configuration information is specified can differ from MUA to MUA, and can be confusing to users, leading to errors when inputting the details. Alternatively, some MUAs have adopted a complex "auto-discovery" process involving probing a domain to see what services might be available. A better approach to all this would be to require minimal information to be entered by a user that would result in automatic configuration of appropriate services for that user. The minimal information entered would be the user's email address. Daboo Standards Track [Page 2] RFC 6186 SRV for Email March 2011 This specification defines new SRV service types for the message submission, IMAP, and POP3 services, to enable simple auto- configuration of MUAs. The priority field of the SRV record can also be used to indicate a preference for one message store access protocol over another. 2. Conventions Used in This DocumentShow full document text