rfc1652.txt
上传用户:horngjaan
上传日期:2009-12-12
资源大小:2882k
文件大小:12k
- Network Working Group J. Klensin, WG Chair
- Request for Comments: 1652 MCI
- Obsoletes: 1426 N. Freed, Editor
- Category: Standards Track Innosoft
- M. Rose
- Dover Beach Consulting, Inc.
- E. Stefferud
- Network Management Associates, Inc.
- D. Crocker
- Silicon Graphics, Inc.
- July 1994
- SMTP Service Extension for 8bit-MIMEtransport
- 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.
- Abstract
- This memo defines an extension to the SMTP service whereby an SMTP
- content body consisting of text containing octets outside of the US-
- ASCII octet range (hex 00-7F) may be relayed using SMTP.
- 1. Introduction
- Although SMTP is widely and robustly deployed, various extensions
- have been requested by parts of the Internet community. In
- particular, a significant portion of the Internet community wishes to
- exchange messages in which the content body consists of a MIME
- message [3] containing arbitrary octet-aligned material. This memo
- uses the mechanism described in [5] to define an extension to the
- SMTP service whereby such contents may be exchanged. Note that this
- extension does NOT eliminate the possibility of an SMTP server
- limiting line length; servers are free to implement this extension
- but nevertheless set a line length limit no lower than 1000 octets.
- Given that this restriction still applies, this extension does NOT
- provide a means for transferring unencoded binary via SMTP.
- Klensin, Freed, Rose, Stefferud & Crocker [Page 1]
- RFC 1652 SMTP 8bit-MIMEtransport July 1994
- 2. Framework for the 8bit MIME Transport Extension
- The 8bit MIME transport extension is laid out as follows:
- (1) the name of the SMTP service extension defined here is
- 8bit-MIMEtransport;
- (2) the EHLO keyword value associated with the extension is
- 8BITMIME;
- (3) no parameter is used with the 8BITMIME EHLO keyword;
- (4) one optional parameter using the keyword BODY is added to
- the MAIL FROM command. The value associated with this
- parameter is a keyword indicating whether a 7bit message
- (in strict compliance with [1]) or a MIME message (in
- strict compliance with [3]) with arbitrary octet content
- is being sent. The syntax of the value is as follows,
- using the ABNF notation of [2]:
- body-value ::= "7BIT" / "8BITMIME"
- (5) no additional SMTP verbs are defined by this extension;
- and,
- (6) the next section specifies how support for the extension
- affects the behavior of a server and client SMTP.
- 3. The 8bit-MIMEtransport service extension
- When a client SMTP wishes to submit (using the MAIL command) a
- content body consisting of a MIME message containing arbitrary lines
- of octet-aligned material, it first issues the EHLO command to the
- server SMTP. If the server SMTP responds with code 250 to the EHLO
- command, and the response includes the EHLO keyword value 8BITMIME,
- then the server SMTP is indicating that it supports the extended MAIL
- command and will accept MIME messages containing arbitrary octet-
- aligned material.
- The extended MAIL command is issued by a client SMTP when it wishes
- to transmit a content body consisting of a MIME message containing
- arbitrary lines of octet-aligned material. The syntax for this
- command is identical to the MAIL command in [1], except that a BODY
- parameter must appear after the address. Only one BODY parameter may
- be used in a single MAIL command.
- Klensin, Freed, Rose, Stefferud & Crocker [Page 2]
- RFC 1652 SMTP 8bit-MIMEtransport July 1994
- The complete syntax of this extended command is defined in [5]. The
- esmtp-keyword is BODY and the syntax for esmtp-value is given by the
- syntax for body-value shown above.
- The value associated with the BODY parameter indicates whether the
- content body which will be passed using the DATA command consists of
- a MIME message containing some arbitrary octet-aligned material
- ("8BITMIME") or is encoded entirely in accordance with [1] ("7BIT").
- A server which supports the 8-bit MIME transport service extension
- shall preserve all bits in each octet passed using the DATA command.
- Naturally, the usual SMTP data-stuffing algorithm applies so that a
- content which contains the five-character sequence of
- <CR> <LF> <DOT> <CR> <LF>
- or a content that begins with the three-character sequence of
- <DOT> <CR> <LF>
- does not prematurely terminate the transfer of the content. Further,
- it should be noted that the CR-LF pair immediately preceeding the
- final dot is considered part of the content. Finally, although the
- content body contains arbitrary lines of octet-aligned material, the
- length of each line (number of octets between two CR-LF pairs), is
- still subject to SMTP server line length restrictions (which may
- allow as few as 1000 octets on a single line). This restriction means
- that this extension MAY provide the necessary facilities for
- transferring a MIME object with the 8BIT content-transfer-encoding,
- it DOES NOT provide a means of transferring an object with the BINARY
- content-transfer-encoding.
- Once a server SMTP supporting the 8bit-MIMEtransport service
- extension accepts a content body containing octets with the high-
- order (8th) bit set, the server SMTP must deliver or relay the
- content in such a way as to preserve all bits in each octet.
- If a server SMTP does not support the 8-bit MIME transport extension
- (either by not responding with code 250 to the EHLO command, or by
- not including the EHLO keyword value 8BITMIME in its response), then
- the client SMTP must not, under any circumstances, attempt to
- transfer a content which contains characters outside the US-ASCII
- octet range (hex 00-7F).
- A client SMTP has two options in this case: first, it may implement a
- gateway transformation to convert the message into valid 7bit MIME,
- or second, or may treat this as a permanent error and handle it in
- Klensin, Freed, Rose, Stefferud & Crocker [Page 3]
- RFC 1652 SMTP 8bit-MIMEtransport July 1994
- the usual manner for delivery failures. The specifics of the
- transformation from 8bit MIME to 7bit MIME are not described by this
- RFC; the conversion is nevertheless constrained in the following
- ways:
- (1) it must cause no loss of information; MIME transport
- encodings must be employed as needed to insure this is
- the case, and
- (2) the resulting message must be valid 7bit MIME.
- 4. Usage Example
- The following dialogue illustrates the use of the 8bit-MIMEtransport
- service extension:
- S: <wait for connection on TCP port 25>
- C: <open connection to server>
- S: 220 dbc.mtview.ca.us SMTP service ready
- C: EHLO ymir.claremont.edu
- S: 250-dbc.mtview.ca.us says hello
- S: 250 8BITMIME
- C: MAIL FROM:<ned@ymir.claremont.edu> BODY=8BITMIME
- S: 250 <ned@ymir.claremont.edu>... Sender and 8BITMIME ok
- C: RCPT TO:<mrose@dbc.mtview.ca.us>
- S: 250 <mrose@dbc.mtview.ca.us>... Recipient ok
- C: DATA
- S: 354 Send 8BITMIME message, ending in CRLF.CRLF.
- ...
- C: .
- S: 250 OK
- C: QUIT
- S: 250 Goodbye
- 5. Security Considerations
- This RFC does not discuss security issues and is not believed to
- raise any security issues not already endemic in electronic mail and
- present in fully conforming implementations of [1].
- 6. Acknowledgements
- This document represents a synthesis of the ideas of many people and
- reactions to the ideas and proposals of others. Randall Atkinson,
- Craig Everhart, Risto Kankkunen, and Greg Vaudreuil contributed ideas
- and text sufficient to be considered co-authors. Other important
- suggestions, text, or encouragement came from Harald Alvestrand, Jim
- Conklin, Mark Crispin, Frank da Cruz, 'Olafur Gudmundsson, Per
- Klensin, Freed, Rose, Stefferud & Crocker [Page 4]
- RFC 1652 SMTP 8bit-MIMEtransport July 1994
- Hedeland, Christian Huitma, Neil Katin, Eliot Lear, Harold A.
- Miller, Keith Moore, Dan Oscarsson, Julian Onions, Neil Rickert, John
- Wagner, Rayan Zachariassen, and the contributions of the entire IETF
- SMTP Working Group. Of course, none of the individuals are
- necessarily responsible for the combination of ideas represented
- here. Indeed, in some cases, the response to a particular criticism
- was to accept the problem identification but to include an entirely
- different solution from the one originally proposed.
- 7. References
- [1] Postel, J., "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol", STD 10, RFC 821,
- USC/Information Sciences Institute, August 1982.
- [2] Crocker, D., "Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text
- Messages", STD 11, RFC 822, UDEL, August 1982.
- [3] Borenstein, N., and N. Freed, "Multipurpose Internet Mail
- Extensions", RFC 1521, Bellcore, Innosoft, September 1993.
- [4] Moore, K., "Representation of Non-ASCII Text in Internet Message
- Headers", RFC 1522, University of Tennessee, September 1993.
- [5] Klensin, J., Freed, N., Rose, M., Stefferud, E., and D. Crocker,
- "SMTP Service Extensions", RFC 1651, MCI, Innosoft, Dover Beach
- Consulting, Inc., Network Management Associates, Inc., Silicon
- Graphics, Inc., July 1994.
- [6] Partridge, C., "Mail Routing and the Domain System", STD 14, RFC
- 974, BBN, January 1986.
- 8. Chair, Editor, and Authors' Addresses
- John Klensin, WG Chair
- MCI Data Services Division
- 2100 Reston Parkway, 6th floor
- Reston, VA 22091
- USA
- Phone:: 1 703 715 7361
- Fax: +1 703 715 7435
- EMail: klensin@mci.net
- Klensin, Freed, Rose, Stefferud & Crocker [Page 5]
- RFC 1652 SMTP 8bit-MIMEtransport July 1994
- Ned Freed, Editor
- Innosoft International, Inc.
- 1050 East Garvey Avenue South
- West Covina, CA 91790
- USA
- Phone:: +1 818 919 3600
- Fax: +1 818 919 3614
- EMail: ned@innosoft.com
- Marshall T. Rose
- Dover Beach Consulting, Inc.
- 420 Whisman Court
- Moutain View, CA 94043-2186
- USA
- Phone: +1 415 968 1052
- Fax: +1 415 968 2510
- EMail: mrose@dbc.mtview.ca.us
- Einar A. Stefferud
- Network Management Associates, Inc.
- 17301 Drey Lane
- Huntington Beach, CA, 92647-5615
- USA
- Phone: +1 714 842 3711
- Fax: +1 714 848 2091
- EMail: stef@nma.com
- Dave Crocker
- Silicon Graphics, Inc.
- 2011 N. Shoreline Blvd.
- P.O. Box 7311
- Mountain View, CA 94039
- USA
- Phone: +1 415 390 1804
- Fax: +1 415 962 8404
- EMail: dcrocker@sgi.com
- Klensin, Freed, Rose, Stefferud & Crocker [Page 6]