Replacing SMTP?

dousette asks: "In reading over one of the RFC's governing the SMTP protocol, and other RFC's as well, it's interesting to note that you see some big names and big companies from time to time. With all the loopholes in the current SMTP specification, is it possible for the Slashdot collective to come up with another one? Would it stand a chance in making it into a standard, or do they just listen to Cisco, AT&T, etc? I realize that a lot of people have a lot of ideas how things should be done (and they haven't been shy about posting them to Slashdot), but has anyone tried to write the RFC for a replacement protocol? As a side note (where I won't be shy about posting how things should be done), if there were a replacement trusted protocol, one could have mail received via that protocol bypass spam filtering, id checking, or whatever checks might be in place (saving processor cycles, etc). The regular checks could still be done on other mail received via the 'older' SMTP protocol. If more and more ISP's make use of this, SMTP could be gradually phased out... or if you are one for a sudden cut-over, just cut to the new one at the same time as the IPv6 upgrade!"

Comments

Interesting idea

[Eudial]

But there are protocols that needs upgrading aswell.
For an instance HTTP, it could use some on the fly compression (which would speed up things a bit).

QWERTY!!!

[litewoheat]

You're probably typing on a QWERTY keyboard, right? Why? Its function is to slow you down so that you don't jam the typewriter.

Moral: Just because one design is better than an already widespread yet inferior design does not mean that it can and will replace the current one. Change is not easy in the least.

Re:Check out Internet Mail 2000

[edrugtrader]

obviously the mail is kept on the ISPs server, not the end users machine. and so what if the end receiving user has to connect to 30 different servers... your ISP already has to connect to them all to get your mail as is. it would be just as fast. the email client could do all of this for you and not even show messages whose server is down. its on THEM.

right now if the company wanted to send an email out to the world it would take a while... with this system they are just sending headers so it goes much faster. the whole point of this is to reduce spam by not letting people send out tons and tons of mail at once, and if they want to THEY have to suffer the bandwidth and storage instead of the ISP.

It's a nice try, but it'll never work.

that is what natural selection said about your family, but you are here, so never count anything out.