[cobalt-users] Fw: Who Will Win the SMTP Authentication Wars?

["Franklin S Werren" <fswerren@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Franklin S. Werren  www.bagpipes.net   www.chautauqualake.net
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----- Original Message ----- 
From: "kayodeok" <news4kayode@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Newsgroups: grc.spam
Sent: Tuesday, March 02, 2004 3:39 PM
Subject: Who Will Win the SMTP Authentication Wars?


> Who Will Win the SMTP Authentication Wars?
> http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1540780,00.asp
> 
>  Probably the single biggest news out of last week's RSA conference 
> was Microsoft's announcement of its Caller ID for E-Mail standard. 
> Caller ID may be the third of the three major proposals that have 
> been announced, but now that Microsoft has put its cards on the 
> table, a great experiment will begin. Over the next year or so, the 
> big players in e-mail-ISPs, software vendors, major corporate users 
> and the government-will see which of them works best.
> 
> The three major proposals are SPF, Caller ID and Yahoo's Domain 
> Keys. SPF is actually up and running, with (as of Feb. 27) 7,957 
> domains registered as implementing it (although a large number of 
> those appear to be parked, inactive domains). Caller ID is starting 
> to roll out as Microsoft sets up the Hotmail servers to support it 
> for outbound mail. Hotmail will begin checking inbound mail for 
> Caller ID this summer, while other major companies, including 
> Amazon.com and Brightmail, have agreed to test it too. Domain Keys, 
> to be honest, hasn't even been officially announced, although Yahoo 
> has conducted private briefings all over the place and Sendmail, 
> the famous mail server company, has announced it is working on 
> support for it.
> 
> This isn't like three brands of bleach, where you've got the same 
> chemicals in all three bottles. In fact, the more you look at these 
> standards, the more different they look. I had been fearful that 
> having three major standards competing would be discouraging to the 
> market, since explaining even one of them isn't easy. And consider 
> that the three major mail providers in the United States-AOL, 
> Yahoo! and Microsoft-are implementing the three different 
> standards. I think, however, that the three, or at least two of 
> them, could complement each other. The ideal solution may be all 
> three, or some later standard that combines the features of two or 
> three.
> 
> I also think that the vendors involved in these standards aren't 
> necessarily going to be hardcore proprietary about their proposals. 
> AOL, which has implemented SPF for outside users to confirm AOL's 
> mail servers (inbound AOL mail doesn't check SPF though), tells me 
> they view this implementation as an experiment. They are not 
> committed to SPF. But the dual problems of spam and e-mail worms 
> had gotten so bad, and SPF was the most mature of authentication 
> standards, that they moved on to the test phase. If some other 
> standard, or combination of standards, proves more effective, AOL 
> won't have a problem implementing it.
> 
> More at: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1540780,00.asp
> 
> -- 
> Kayode Okeyode
> http://www.kayodeok.co.uk/weblog/
> http://www.kayodeok.btinternet.co.uk/favorites/webdesign.htm