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draft-palme-autosub-03.txt
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Network Working Group Jacob Palme
Internet Draft Stockholm University/KTH
<draft-palme-autosub-03.txt> Sweden
Category-to-be: Experimental standard July 1997
Expires January 1998
Loop control for the Auto-Submitted e-mail header
Status of this Memo
This document is an Internet-Draft. Internet-Drafts are
working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other
groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-
Drafts.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of
six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by
other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use
Internet- Drafts as reference material or to cite them
other than as ``work in progress.''
To learn the current status of any Internet-Draft, please
check the ``1id-abstracts.txt'' listing contained in the
Internet- Drafts Shadow Directories on ftp.is.co.za
(Africa), nic.nordu.net (Europe), munnari.oz.au (Pacific
Rim), ds.internic.net (US East Coast), or ftp.isi.edu (US
West Coast).
This memo provides information for the Internet community.
This memo does not specify an Internet standard of any
kind, since this document is mainly a compilation of
information taken from other RFC-s.. Distribution of this
memo is unlimited.
Abstract
This memo introduces certain advanced features for the
Auto-Submitted e-mail header.
Changes from the previous version of this IETF draft
The specification of the Auto-Submitted header itself has
been moved to draft-ietf-mailext-new-fields-08-txt.
However, the controversial loop control feature has been
removed from that document, and is instead specified here.
The intention is that Auto-Submitted without loop control
is to become a proposed standard, while the loop-control
feature is to become an experimental standard.
1. Introduction
This memo introduces loop control features for the Auto-
Submitted header defined in [8].
2. New syntax for the Auto-Submitted header
Syntax:
auto-submitted-field = "Auto-Submitted ":" auto-
submitted
auto-submitted = ( "no" / "auto-generated" /
"auto-replied" /
"inter-application" /
"x-" <private-extension> /
"<future-extension> )
<optional-parameter-list>
<optional-parameter-list> = *( ";" <optional-parameter> )
<optional-parameter> = "loopstep: <number> /
<other-optional-parameter>
<number> = *DIGIT
The added syntax as compared to [8] is the new value
"inter-application" and the new parameter "loopstep:"
followed by a positive number. These are used in the
following ways:
inter-application is used when it is known that both the
sender and the recipient of this message is an automatic
process.
When an Auto-Submitted message is sent in response to
another Auto-Submitted message, the value of loopstep is
increased by 1. A message without any loopstep parameter
is assumed to have "loopstep: 1". The value of loopstep
can be used to stop loops by not producing automatic
responses to messages if loopstep has a value above a
certain limit. The size of this limit is application-
dependent.
3. Security considerations
This proposal raises no new security concerns, instead, it
reduces the risk to security of certain kinds of loops.
4. Acknowledgments
Keith Moore and Uzi Paz have influenced this document with
valuable suggestions.
5. References
[1] D. Crocker: "Standard for the format of ARPA Internet text
messages." STD 11, RFC 822, August 1982.
[2] S. Hardcastle-Kille: "Mapping between X.400(1988) / ISO 10021
and RFC 822", RFC 1327 May 1992.
[3] ISO/ITU: "Message Handling Systems", ISO
international standard
10021, ITU recommendation X.400.
[4] ISO/ITU: "Message Handling Systems, Part 7: Interpersonal
Messaging System, ISO international standard 10021-7, ITU
recommendation X.420.
[5] N. Borenstein, N. Freed: "MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail
Extensions)", RFC 1521, September 1993.
[6] K. Moore, G. Vaudreuil, "An Extensible Message Format for
Delivery Status Notifications", RFC 1894, January
1996.
[7] K. Moore, "SMTP Service Extension for Delivery Status
Notifications", RFC 1891, January 1996.
[8] J. Palme, "The Auto-Submitted, Supersedes and Expires E-mail
Headers. drafti-ietf-mailext-new-fields-08.txt. July 1997.
6. Author's address
Jacob Palme Phone: +46-8-16 16 67
Stockholm University/KTH Fax: +46-8-783 08 29
Electrum 230 E-mail: jpalme@dsv.su.se
S-164 40 Kista, Sweden