Re: Comments on minion-spec.txt

[Steve Crook <steve@bananasplit.info>]

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On Friday 16 May 2003 04:03, Nick Mathewson wrote:
> On Sat, 2003-05-10 at 17:37, George Danezis wrote:
> > 2) A lot of the code seems to become more complicated because we have a
> > variable length field to describe variable length addressing information.
> > Is that as useful as originally thought? How many of the current
> > remailers use MMTP, and how many use SMTP to talk to each other?
>
> First, by "a lot of the code", I assume you mean "a lot of the
> pseudocode."   Right now, there is *no* SMTP server-to-server
> communication, and I'd fight any proposal to add it.

Hi folks,

First off, I'm a Technical Architect rather than as a programmer, so please 
excuse me if I'm wildly missing the point.  :)

Looking at the current Type-I and Type-II systems that use SMTP for delivery, 
the operator has an option to use the (sometimes) formidable defences of an 
MTA to shield the Remailer from a DoS type attack.  Although we refer to 
"first hop" and "last hop" Remailers, in reality the MTA is always the first 
and last link in the chain.

With Type-III this changes completely and the Mixminion application is playing 
the server role and actively listening for incoming messages.  This appears 
to remove the capability for operators to employ filters and DoS prevention 
techniques that are external to those implemented within Mixminion.

I can appreciate the benefits of MMTP over SMTP as a delivery method, but are 
the defences it provides up to the challenge of a frequently unfriendly user 
community?

Steve
(Snorky's Operator)
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